[Development] Proposal: Deprecate QVector in Qt 6

[Ville Voutilainen]

On Thu, 23 Apr 2020 at 14:28, André Pönitz <apoenitz at t-online.de> wrote:
>
> On Thu, Apr 23, 2020 at 12:30:32PM +0300, Ville Voutilainen wrote:
> > On Thu, 23 Apr 2020 at 12:25, Philippe <philwave at gmail.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Almost all the time I second your positions, but not this time ;)
> > >
> > > QList is historically a cause of ambiguity, and Qt6 is the chance to get rid of that.
> >
> > Indeed. QList causes confusion for the uninitiated that are aware of
> > the differences between std::vector and std::list [...]
>
> And "vector" confuses the uninitiated who expect it to be an element
> of a vector space, to point somewhere, to carry diseases, or to be
> something like a single pointer ("interrupt vector").
>
> I really wonder who thought that "vector" was a good name for a
> container of not necessarily scalar elements that can change its
> dimension.
>
> Maybe someone who was involved with the initial choice of that name
> can share some insight?

Stepanov chose the name; that much we know. Some ruminations, accuracy
unknown. I can't find
any material on it in the newer TC++PL edition I have:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/581426/why-is-a-c-vector-called-a-vector

QVector is certainly closer to std::vector than QList is to std::list.
Vector isn't a really good name either,
for people recently taught in elementary school math, or for java
programmers coming in.
For C++ programmers, it gives a much better suggestion of what it is
than calling it QList does.