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Re:Verb-Noun vs. Noun-Verb by jodrellblank on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @04:21PM (#21275079)
If verbs from the object flowing you want, "That style to me is preferable" you should say. (Style is the object, preferring it is the verb)

English reads left to right overall, but writing instructions in English does not flow smoothly either way. e.g. "shuffle a deck of playing cards then deal four" reads more naturally than either "a deck of playing cards shuffle then four cards deal" or "deal four cards after shuffling a deck of playing cards".

shuffle(cards).deal(4) is a mix of both approaches.

Re:Verb-Noun vs. Noun-Verb by rtkwe on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @04:35PM (#21275250)
Yes yes, english doesn't follow this noun-verb order but that's not what I'm actually talking about.

Usually the languages either encourage cards.shuffle().deal(4) or deal(shuffle(cards),4).

In the 'noun-verb'/OOP version the sequence of modifications follows the english reading order where basically I only have to keep information about the last result in my head. The functional verb-noun version I have to pop in and out of layers: 'ok we're dealing what?, something shuffled, what are we shuffling?, the cards object/variable, ok we're dealing shuffled cards how many are we dealing? 4.'

In general the noun-verb follows the sequence of operations applied by the computer so it's easier to read.

Re:Verb-Noun vs. Noun-Verb by jodrellblank on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @04:48PM (#21275444)
That's where I was going as well, LISP style and APL style claims "reads left to right" but having to build up a stack of buffered work which you can only unwind once you get to the end, is annoying and unhelpful and limiting.

But simply turning it around to cards.shuffle().deal(4) isn't a good answer, it's still the case that you can only put a small number of things together in a chain because it stops making sense. If the next move was to start the game, "cards.shuffle().deal(4).startgame('some-card-game')" does not make sense because starting the game is not something the cards do, but "start(deal(shuffle(cards), 4), 'some-card-game')" can make sense because start is a function which takes a board state and a game to start. It describes the world state, not the cards and their abilities.

That is, neither style is right, but a mixed style where both approaches are available and you can mix and match to be more expressive, works much better, IMO. Chunking a small number of things with prefix into one operation, or with postfix into one operation, but combining those chunks flexibly at a larger scale.

Re:Verb-Noun vs. Noun-Verb by cb504 on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @05:06PM (#21275703)
the main point was about auto-completion and usability and discoverability. fluent api for the win.
Re:Verb-Noun vs. Noun-Verb by qtplatypus on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @10:23PM (#21278373)
English is worse as it is SVO. So a more English like language would be all infix operators. I thunk part of ambiguity is that English can be used in both modes.

“Say that” “He said”

Re:Verb-Noun vs. Noun-Verb by rtkwe on Wednesday October 16, 2019 @11:58PM (#21278789)
I was really just talking about the left to right order of modification not the actual order of English sentences. Apparently I was very unclear because that's all the responses I'm getting.