Note: this question is ported over from the official elixir repo, where I was informed not to post this type of question there. Apologies to anyone seeing it twice. Also, Jose Valim did take the time to comment before closing the issue, but I’m curious as to the feeling of the community as a whole.
I’m coming from the Python world, where we typically call idiomatic Python pythonic. If you’re describing doing something in a way that is conceptually correct and falls within the guidelines for the Zen of Python you would say that it is pythonic. Is there an established term for idiomatic elixir? If not, should there be?
(bad) examples:
Hermetic
Alchemic
Fluidic
Etc
Is this something that the community would even want, or is it not really important?
I don’t see why pythonic is bad. It’s a hell of a lot easier to say, “We should refactor this to be more pythonic,” than to say, “we should refactor this in a way that is more consistent with the guidelines of idiomatic Python.”
Because it’s a made up word. Saying something is “idiomatic Python” is self-documenting and doesn’t require the follow-up of “what is Pythonic?” IMO making up words that only community insiders know is counter to a welcoming community, but I was mostly just joking (although I really don’t like fake English).
Pythonic is a made up work, but it’s a made up word that makes sense. “-onic” tells you everything you need to do. If it was something like “Pythonicalogious” then I’d agree with you.
Is this a hidden proposal to call idiomatic ruby “rubysh”?
I like the conciseness of “pythonic”, as you already mentioned before, because it is assembled from “python” and “-onic” it tells you everything. This is a very clear word.
But there is no way to form such a word for elixir. Elixironic? Sounds like my “rubysh” from above, a little like a joke… Elixiromatic? Thats more like a machine spitting out some kind of magic juice every couple of minutes (as in coffee-o-matic).
So it is the best to just stick with what we already have: “idiomatic elixir”
In all seriousness, this is the first term that I used when trying to describe idiomatic Elixir on a commit message, and it came very naturally. That doesn’t mean it’s good, just that it’s easy.
