[chef] Re: Re: Re: Re: FC001, attributes as strings vs symbols

[Hedge Hog < >]

On Wed, Oct 17, 2012 at 7:16 AM, Paul Graydon 
<
 >
 wrote:
> Why add unnecessary constraints?
> What do we gain by stopping people from using -'s and other marks in
> attributes?

To my mind using strings facilitates, if not encourages, a bad
practice in naming: using minus, dash, etc. in attribute names.
It seems that if we go down the path of endorsing strings then we
should give up accessing attr data via methods and maybe even symbol
keys.

If not then there will be a growing population of names with minus,dash,etc..
Eventually, and I really do mean taking a long term view, this means
your cookbook/shop cannot adopt a practice/convention of accessing by
method name. or you have to sanitize strings before `intern`-ing them.

IMO, this benefit to discouraging use of strings a key names is large
enough to make the short term pain worthwhile.

Hopefully I have not misunderstood something.
Best wishes
Hedge

> It doesn't particularly affect me either way because I don't do it, but I'm
> not sure I see a particular benefit in restricting such practices.
>
> Paul
>
>
> On 10/16/2012 10:13 AM, Jesse Nelson wrote:
>>
>> I agree with the too noisy sentiment. I think that being consistent in
>> a cook is good, but I personally prefer symbols and enforcing a no -'s
>> in attrib names. Of course there are exceptions that you run into, and
>> you have to use strings. I find symbols easier on the eyes and
>> fingers.
>>
>> -
>> Jesse Nelson
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 12:21 PM, Jeremy Voorhis 
>> <
 >
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> As a maintainer of in-house and 3rd party cookbooks for my organization,
>>> I
>>> find FC001 too noisy to be useful. We haven't yet modernized our repo to
>>> include every single cookbook as a self-contained repo, and in some cases
>>> find little benefit in doing so. New cookbooks follow FC001 and other
>>> best
>>> practices that didn't yet exist or weren't widely known at the time, so
>>> this
>>> rule is mostly ignored for now and we test for the desired outcome
>>> instead.
>>>
>>> Jeremy
>>>
>>>
>>> On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 11:28 AM, Joshua Timberman 
>>> <
 >
>>> wrote:
>>>>
>>>> Ohai, Chefs!
>>>>
>>>> We want to hear from you: which way of using node attributes do you
>>>> prefer? Please take this single question survey:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://www.surveygizmo.com/s3/1059291/FC001-Use-strings-in-preference-to-symbols-to-access-node-attributes
>>>>
>>>> This is in response to a longer twitter discussion today on the subject.
>>>> The survey will be left open for awhile, letting as many people as
>>>> possible
>>>> answer. We *really* value this feedback.
>>>>
>>>> If you want an explanation of why this rule came about the way it did,
>>>> and
>>>> our rationale for preferring strings to symbols, see this issue in the
>>>> Foodcritic project:
>>>>
>>>> https://github.com/acrmp/foodcritic/issues/1
>>>>
>>>> If you're going to be at the Chef summit next week, I'm happy to discuss
>>>> this in greater detail, too :-).
>>>
>>>
>



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