Alias as better-cond

[vemv]

Hey there, great macro!

I find there's a 'usability' issue though:

• I don't want to refer-clojure, it's ugly and I have to type it (potentially many times)
• I don't want to create a meaningless :as alias like b or better, or a redundant one like better-cond

If you offered a defmacro better-cond ... alias, I could just:

• Type better-cond
• Hit some standard keyboard shortcut
• Have [better-cond.core :refer [better-cond]] auto-inserted, just like with any other macro

WDYT?

Cheers - Victor

[vemv]

OTOH, it's not exactly expressive to have a contruct called better-cond in my code (it doesn't map to an human-language concept like when or if), but that's an acceptable tradeoff to me.

Another option would be to choose a more meaningful name. conditional? Not verbose, it has the same length as my proposed better-cond :)

[Engelberg]

Thanks for the comments, glad you find it useful.

I don't really see the benefit of your proposal.
better/cond and better-cond have the same number of characters.
And in the namespace declaration,
[better-cond.core :as better] has fewer characters than
[better-cond.core :refer [better-cond]]

So the existing mechanism is every bit as concise as your proposal.
And if you choose, you can shorten the characters even more by picking b as the alias.

[vemv]

Hmm, concision is not my exact concern, see the first two bullet points.

Personally I can type better-cond <keyboard shortcut> and have [better-cond.core :refer [better-cond]] auto-inserted.

I don't have to type much with either choice, but with my proposal, one's code becomes more meaningful. b is meaningless, and as mentioned I don't want to :refer-clojure

[Engelberg]

OK, if concision doesn't matter then it really comes down to:
better/cond vs. better-cond

Why do you prefer the hyphen over the slash? It's a pretty subtle difference, but I'd argue that better/cond is more meaningful because it conveys that you are using some new flavor of cond from another namespace.

But more importantly, the ability to provide an alias gives everyone total choice and preference over what matters to them. If you like the meaning of better/cond, that's your choice, and if someone else wants concision, they can choose b/cond or going through the refer-clojure ceremony to just use cond.
better-cond forces a long name on everyone, one that would get even longer for users who want to prepend an alias to make it clear where it comes from.

[vemv]

Hey there, apologies for letting this issue pile up in my email

Why do you prefer the hyphen over the slash?

Because my intended usage is requiring with :refer not :as. Introducing a thing called better is not particularly expressive. Why add the cognitive overload of introducing an alias (better) if I know it will have exactly one possible usage (cond?)

better-cond forces a long name on everyone

My suggestion was implementing better-cond as an addition, not a replacement. i.e.

(defmacro better-cond "An alias" [& args] `(cond ~@args))