We're not going to add def-. There is regret over even adding defn-, but we
don't take things away...
At one point all of the current metadata niceties didn't exist (used to be
#^{:private true} some may recall) and defn- seemed worth doing I presume
(pre-dates my involvementT). But then that was all simplified down to just
^:private and it's preferred to compose the pieces rather than copy N
things.
There used to be a slew of these in the old clojure-contrib
(https://github.com/clojure/clojure-contrib/blob/master/modules/def/src/main/clojure/clojure/contrib/def.clj
- but no def- !).
How often do you def things anyway (much less private things)?
On Monday, February 26, 2018 at 1:50:40 PM UTC-6, Leon Grapenthin wrote:
>
> I have written enough Clojure so that I can assure you that every few days
> when I type ^:private again I am still annoyed by it. Not every time, but
> probably every second or third time.
>
> Its just in the way of the prototyping typing (micro-)flow. SHIFT-6 you
> don't hit so often so you have to hit it right. On german keyboards, by the
> way, ^ is a much more annoying character to type. Then a colon, did I miss
> the colon? What did I want to do again?
>
> When prototyping an API ns its important to distinguish what is private
> and what isn't. If only I could just write def- without any overhead.
>
> First world aka best language problems, I know...
>
> But whats left for an enthusiast except bikeshedding? We both know that a
> JIRA discussion on this will not happen due to a lack of importance. And
> unless somebody manages to convince Rich, this feature won't happen.
>
> Fair enough. I'd consider myself a power user since 1.5.1 and value its
> conservative governance above every other kind.
> The "lets not start postfixing lots of macros with -" argument a good one
> in general and probably was a good one at the time. But not in this case
> because defn and def are the two most used and most elementary top level
> forms.
>
> This argument didn't convince anyone who has asked me about this. The
> counter argument goes "I don't want the - postfix for anything else, just
> for def because I use it a lot" -rightfully so.
>
> The lack of def- is just unnecessary typing overhead in lots of cases. It
> could be removed at the cost 5m on a beautiful day. I'd appreciate it :)
>
> On Monday, February 26, 2018 at 6:52:51 PM UTC+1, Alexander Yakushev wrote:
>>
>> - Not that often. When I know for certain, I add ^:private. Not like it's
>> much more work. If I didn't know ahead of time, I would forget to add the
>> private flag in either case.
>> - Never.
>> - Can't recollect such an event.
>> - A few times. As far as I can tell, people appreciate the metadata
>> approach since it is unique and powerful. The lack of one particular
>> non-critical syntactic sugar is never an issue.
>>
>> I won't mind having def- as much as I don't mind not having it. Pretty
>> much the same as for defn- – Earth wouldn't stop turning if you had to type
>> defn ^:private once in a while.
>>
>> And while I agree with you that it would be somewhat useful, bikeshedding
>> only gets you so far.
>>
>> On Monday, February 26, 2018 at 7:17:05 PM UTC+2, Leon Grapenthin wrote:
>>>
>>> - How many times do you just write (def ...) instead of (def ^:private
>>> ...) because you are not sure whether you need the definition yet, want to
>>> save effort, and then you forget to add ^:private later?
>>> - How many times have you implemented def- yourself into your project
>>> and then used only half of the time because you had to require and :refer
>>> the thing from some util namespace which is just as annoying as typing
>>> ^:private?
>>> - How many times do you use autocomplete on some namespace and find
>>> internals because their dev forgot ^:private?
>>> - How many times in a year do you have to explain to a Clojure newbie
>>> that there is defn- but no def-?
>>>
>>> IME the statistic strongly supports def- - and I don't see why it would
>>> hurt.
>>> Having def- in clojure.core will not magically result in having
>>> defmacro- and defmulti- and xyz-. Its a false and the only counterargument
>>> I have seen.
>>>
>>> It would be very useful, though.
>>>
>>> On Monday, February 26, 2018 at 1:44:27 PM UTC+1, Alexander Yakushev
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Usually, it is better to use metadata rather than create an exponential
>>>> explosion of names. Public/private is just one dimension, but you also
>>>> have
>>>> static/non-static, dynamic/non-dynamic, etc. Then you have functions,
>>>> vars,
>>>> macros, perhaps modified functions (like schema.core/defn). Cartesian
>>>> product of those would be huge.
>>>>
>>>> defn- is an exclusion from the rule probably because it is used more
>>>> often than others.
>>>>
>>>> On Monday, February 26, 2018 at 10:58:43 AM UTC+2, Promise. wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>> `defn-` => `defn`
>>>>> 'def-` => `def`
>>>>>
>>>>
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