From: "Hal E. Fulton" <hal9000@...>
Date: 2002-12-20T02:32:37+09:00
Subject: Re: [ANN] Test::Unit 0.1.5

----- Original Message ----- 
From: <nathaniel@NOSPAMtalbott.ws>
To: "ruby-talk ML" <ruby-talk@ruby-lang.org>
Sent: Thursday, December 19, 2002 10:23 AM
Subject: Re: [ANN] Test::Unit 0.1.5


> Hal E. Fulton [mailto:hal9000@hypermetrics.com] wrote:
> 
> > From: <nathaniel@NOSPAMtalbott.ws>
> > > Lyle Johnson [mailto:lyle@users.sourceforge.net] wrote:
> > > 
> > > > I don't see it explicitly stated in the ChangeLog, but has
> > > > TestCase#tear_down likewise been renamed to TestCase#teardown?
> > > 
> > > No. Tear down is definitely two words, while setup could be one or 
> > > two. Plus the fact that tear_down is used a lot less often.
> > 
> > Hmm. Do you use it as a noun (in English, I mean)? Do you 
> > hyphenate it? (The difference between "set up" and "setup" 
> > is, of course, verb vs. noun.)
> 
> Which was, of course, debated back and forth ad nauseum on the list not
> to long ago... not to mention the longstanding debate going on in my
> head :-)
> 
> Suffice it to say, the names are stabilized, and will not change again,
> at least not until Test::Unit runs under Rite ;-)

Hmm, I missed that discussion and can't find it now.

Well, first of all:
1. Your software, not mine! And thanks for 
doing this, by the way.
2. I accept that you're not going to change
the names and I'm not flaming you.

But speaking as a nitpicker and the son of an
English teacher, emphatically a mixed blessing,
I'm always bothered by antiparallelism.

For example, suppose I had "starting" and "ending"
methods of some kind. I might name them 
initiate/terminate (verbs) or initiation/termination
(nouns). But I'd never name them initiate/termination
or initiation/terminate.

But you had a verb-verb form and explicitly changed 
it to noun-verb. Why? What does that buy you?

<even_further_off_topic>
I recall a radio ad for some beauty product line that
probably didn't trip anyone's wires but my own. It
said, "Products for your hair, your skin, and your 
lifestyle." Hmm! Subtle, maybe, but I'd consider that
antiparallel also. Surely no one smears stuff on her
lifestyle the same way she smears it on her hair and 
skin.

But sometimes it's done deliberately for a subtle
comic effect, as in the line from a poem where a woman
"made" three things: "She made a surmise, up her mind,
and a dash for the door."
</even_further_off_topic>

Cheers,
Hal