Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

developer.apple.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 188 posts

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#161

Post by toxik »

a3n wrote: post #135
toxik wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit anglocentrists to never think that ”oh maybe there are other systems where it makes sense.” Hell, _most_ languages have more words for kinship than English! I always found it odd for example that grandfather doesn’t specify on which side. Like, how is that not super useful information?

Apple. Red apple. Green apple. Grandfather. Maternal grandfather. Paternal grandfather.

Try making a five year old say ”maternal grandfather,” other languages have two-syllable words for all of these, like the Chinese words for which these are made.

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#162

Post by toxik »

benj111 wrote: post #134
toxik wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s a bit anglocentrists to never think that ”oh maybe there are other systems where it makes sense.” Hell, _most_ languages have more words for kinship than English! I always found it odd for example that grandfather doesn’t specify on which side. Like, how is that not super useful information?

You say Maternal/Paternal Grandparents, or add last names, or use different names (eg Granny and Nana). I can't think of a situation where I've had to differentiate them as relatives, only as individuals, so I can't see a distinction being that useful.

Really, you’re going to defend this lack of precision? I’m sure you can get by but having precise words is rarely a loss. Anglocentric superiority complex eh.

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#163

Post by garaetjjte »

dang wrote: post #92
cbsks wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. @dang, can you fix this?

In principle yes, but I tried in 4 (edit: 5) browsers and couldn't reproduce the problem, and it's late here and I'm running out of steam. So you may have to suffer overnight. Sorry about that. Edit: ok, thanks to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode_character_property#Whi... I put in a bunch of ​ . I hope that fixes it because I need to sign off now. If it isn't fixed, it would be helpful if som…

It probably shouldn't be visible in title tag: https://i.imgur.com/a1RLCt0.png

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#165

Post by whoevercares »

eridius wrote: post #98
School-Cotton wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CNBiaoJie Still easier to understand than this monstrosity, even for those who don’t speak Chinese (assuming they can google the documentation).

I have no idea what "BiaoJie" is (well, in context, I assume it's a romanization of the pronunciation of 表姐), so that name would be completely unhelpful. Whereas the current name describes the relationship such that I can understand it, even if I don't know why this particular relationship is deserving of a name. Something like CNBiaoJie also assumes that Chinese is the only language that names this relationship, and…

India has the same convention and words However the CN prefix might mean you should learn a bit Pinyin or Chinese haha

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#166

Post by benj111 »

toxik wrote: post #162
benj111 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You say Maternal/Paternal Grandparents, or add last names, or use different names (eg Granny and Nana). I can't think of a situation where I've had to differentiate them as relatives, only as individuals, so I can't see a distinction being that useful.

Really, you’re going to defend this lack of precision? I’m sure you can get by but having precise words is rarely a loss. Anglocentric superiority complex eh.

You're right that I'm stuck in the Matrix so to speak, so I may well be missing out on something I'm not aware of. But I don't believe I've ever had to use the words 'Maternal/Paternal GrandMother/Father/Parent' which must say something about how often its used.

Maybe we could turn it around, maybe you only use the word because it exists, maybe its like defenestrate. We could get by perfectly well without it.

I don't believe I expressed on opinion on whether any one language was 'better', I could wax lyrical about the warts and shortcomings of the English language, I don't know enough about any other languages to say whether they are better or worse.

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#167

Post by School-Cotton »

simias wrote: post #117
School-Cotton wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They could have used Pinyin. Even people who don’t speak Chinese and have to look it up would have an easier time understanding it than trying to parse this identifier.

And then every time you re-read the code you have to look it up to understand 1/ what the hell is even this and 2/ is it the right one at the right place.

Yes, which I think is easier than having to parse and understand this identifier every time you see it.

Especially since after a few times you will remember what it means and not have to look it up anymore. There's a good reason we use jargon for complicated concepts rather than re-explaining them every time they're used. "while" is a lot easier to understand once its meaning has been explained to you than "EveryTimeWeGetHereCheckIfThisConditionIsTrueAndExecuteThisCodeBlockAndJumpBackHereIfSo".

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#168

Post by School-Cotton »

eridius wrote: post #98
School-Cotton wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CNBiaoJie Still easier to understand than this monstrosity, even for those who don’t speak Chinese (assuming they can google the documentation).

I have no idea what "BiaoJie" is (well, in context, I assume it's a romanization of the pronunciation of 表姐), so that name would be completely unhelpful. Whereas the current name describes the relationship such that I can understand it, even if I don't know why this particular relationship is deserving of a name. Something like CNBiaoJie also assumes that Chinese is the only language that names this relationship, and…

I have no idea what ElderCousinMothersSiblingsDaughterOrFathersSistersDaughter is, and understanding and remembering "BiaoJie" would be much easier for me than re-parsing that every time. As I pointed out in another comment, there's a reason we give short names to complicated concepts instead of spelling them out every time. "while" is a lot easier to understand once its meaning has been explained to you than "EveryTimeWeGetHereCheckIfThisConditionIsTrueAndExecuteThisCodeBlockAndJumpBackHereIfSo".

> Something like CNBiaoJie also assumes that Chinese is the only language that names this relationship, and I don't know if that's true.

No it doesn't, not any more than having an identifier called "Sister" assumes that English is the only language with the concept of sisters.

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#169

Post by School-Cotton »

zoul wrote: post #113
TimTheTinker wrote: post #33

At first glance this looked like a code smell, but after some reflection I can't think of a cleaner, more readable way to uniquely identify each possible relationship -- especially in a strongly-typed language with an IDE. Here's the full list: https://developer.apple.com/documentation/contacts/contacts_...

I still don’t think this is a good solution because of the common CNLabelContactRelation prefix. It would be better to introduce a CNLabelContactRelation enum? Then the enum cases would be much less painful. Or at least an empty enum as a namespace: enum CNLabelContactRelation { static let aunt = "…" static let auntFathersBrothersWife = "…" }

In Objective-C (and C), enum members are unscoped. So in your example "aunt" would be in the global namespace.

Re: CNLabelContactRelation​YoungerCousin​MothersSiblingsDaughter​OrFathersSistersDaughter

#170

Post by bschne »

dri_ft wrote: post #146
bschne wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a notion in linguistics of languages being more "modular", i.e. tacking on details like this through additional words, versus having more and more specific words to cover these cases? Coming from my native German, I am very much used to the former, so I always find it interesting to see how different other languages are structured sometimes.

Not quite the same thing, but languages (like German) that build up words for complex concepts by forming big words out of little ones are called agglutinative[1]. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agglutinative_language

If I recall correctly from my very limited knowledge, German is not really agglutinative, as it mainly just has the ability to combine preexisting nouns together into one word, while agglutinative languages take a root and then add a pre- and suffixes to build up new words related to the meaning of the root.

Taking the 7th example from this table [1], while you could theoretically construct something like "erfolglosenmacherwerden" in German and have it still sound somewhat comprehensible, that is not something that is actively done in the usage of the language and would sound about as strange as coming up with "to unsuccessfulmakerbecome" in English.

[1] https://aimdanismanlik.files.wordpress.com/2012/04/539526_38...

Post reply on HN