[Development] A modest proposal: disable lower-case keywords (emit, foreach, forever, signals, slots) by default

[André Pönitz]

On Fri, Feb 21, 2020 at 02:41:35PM +0200, Ville Voutilainen wrote:
> On Fri, 21 Feb 2020 at 14:30, Mitch Curtis <mitch.curtis at qt.io> wrote:
> 
> > > > without any annotation is not what we want. We'd miss vital
> > > > information
> > > and reduce readability.  Can you please explain what that vital
> > > information is?
> > How can you tell if it's a signal being emitted or just a function
> > call without the emit syntax? With the emit syntax before the signal
> > emission, it's immediately obvious that it's a signal. Not all
> > signals follow the *Changed() naming convention, nor should they, so
> > it becomes even less obvious in those cases.
> 
> Why do I need to know that it's a signal being emitted?

The question is not why you need to know that, but why apparently
quite a few people feel that using an empty macro adds value.

My best guess is that different people have different reasons here.

I myself usually prefer shorter code to longer doing the same, so my
natural reaction would be to drop 'emit'. However, I am actually ok with
having it, and that's mainly because it signals the use of a convention
in the code I usually operate on: Signals are use to communicate to an
unknown outside, so one might spend a thought e.g. on how much work this
might trigger, whether threads play a role etc.

> How is that "vital information"?

It's not *vital*, and it's irrelevant to the compiler. It's there for
the human reader.

   int i = 2;

is practically the same as
  
   int fjwqDwerewnrUHBLswd = 2

for an compiler, still some people might prefer one of them.

Andre'