Actually… we can go pretty scientific on this sort of thing and heat map keyboard usage to get a better picture of how “usable” this is.
I pasted a file that contains seven \’s in it and heat mapped it at https://www.patrick-wied.at/projects/heatmap-keyboard/ Even *with* several \’s throughout my source file the majority of my key presses take place much closer to the $ key than the \ key. I think we can all argue about what is clearer or not, but I think for the majority of us, the \ key is quite inconvenient compared to the keys around where we type the most. I also ran several of iOS 10’s sample code through the heat map and continue to get pretty similar results: the \ is much further from the hottest part of the keyboard than the ones closer to where your hand usually rests. Maybe this is flawed, but I think it is hard to argue that the \ is easy to type when there are far more usable alternatives. Brandon > On Jun 21, 2016, at 6:10 PM, Daniel Resnick via swift-evolution > <[email protected]> wrote: > > I also disagree for the same reasons that Gwynne and Brent mentioned: I find > '\(...)' easy to read, fine to type, and consistent with other string > escaping syntax. > > On Tue, Jun 21, 2016 at 3:55 PM, Brent Royal-Gordon via swift-evolution > <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > > I find that typing \(var) is very disruptive to my typing flow. The more I > > code in Swift, the more I like it, but every time I'm coding and then have > > to hiccup while typing \ then ( causes me to be annoyed. I know, it's > > minor, but it isn't a key combination that flows quickly. > > > > I would much rather have $() or perhaps ${} (like Groovy lang) or perhaps > > @() to go along with other uses of @ throughout the language. > > Even though I'm used to Perl's and Ruby's interpolation syntaxes, I > immediately liked `\(…)`. It's parsimonious: Rather than taking a third > character (besides \ and ") to mean something special in a string literal, it > reuses one of the existing ones. There's no need to escape a character you > wouldn't otherwise have to touch, or to think of another character as > "magical" in a string. It fits nicely with the rest of the syntax, with `\` > indicating a special construct and then `()` delimiting an expression, just > as they do elsewhere in the language. It's an elegant solution to a problem > traditionally solved inelegantly. It's very Swifty in that way. > > > A shifted key, like $ or @, followed by another shifted key like (, allows > > for a much faster flow and they are much closer to the home keys than \ > > which is nearly as far from home keys as possible (and awkward). > > > I don't have any trouble typing it personally. If you find yourself > accidentally typing `\9` or `|(`, we could probably offer an error for the > former or warning for the latter with a fix-it. But if you're complaining > that it takes a tiny fraction of a second longer to type than `$(` would, > then honestly, I just can't bring myself to care. Swift optimizes for code > reading. If we wanted to optimize for code typing instead, we'd have a very > different style. > > -- > Brent Royal-Gordon > Architechies > > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution > <https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution> > > _______________________________________________ > swift-evolution mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
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