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Geoff Romer
12fbf9c9c2
This proposal codifies our preference for designs that support "progressive disclosure", meaning that programmers can ignore a given language concept (or even be unaware of it) until it is directly relevant to the task they're doing.
50 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
50 lines
2.0 KiB
Markdown
# Principle: Progressive disclosure
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Part of the Carbon Language project, under the Apache License v2.0 with LLVM
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Exceptions. See /LICENSE for license information.
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SPDX-License-Identifier: Apache-2.0 WITH LLVM-exception
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-->
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## Table of contents
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- [Background](#background)
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- [Principle](#principle)
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- [Applications of this principle](#applications-of-this-principle)
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## Background
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[Progressive disclosure](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_disclosure)
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is a UX design pattern which defers revealing information and advanced/
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special-case controls to the user until they are relevant to the current task,
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in order to make the system easier to learn and use. Although the term
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originates in GUI design, it can be applied to language design as well. In
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particular, it's one of
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[Swift's core design principles](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRtyWqwLM3M&t=369s).
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## Principle
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In Carbon, we will prefer designs that support progressive disclosure, in the
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sense defined
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[here](https://www.douggregor.net/posts/swift-for-cxx-practitioners-extensions/#:~:text=By%20default%2C%20any%20code,understanding%20of%20the%20language):
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> ... the idea that one can ignore certain aspects of the language when starting
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> out, and then learn about them only at the time when you need them, without
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> invalidating any of your prior understanding of the language.
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## Applications of this principle
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Types such as `i32` are designed to follow progressive disclosure: they are
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actually class types defined in the prelude library that support arithmetic
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operations by implementing certain customization interfaces. However,
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programmers can learn to use them by thinking of them as primitive types like
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their C counterparts, without needing to understand the arithmetic operator
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interfaces, interface implementation in general, libraries, the prelude, or even
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class types. Subsequently learning those concepts doesn't invalidate that
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original mental model, but rather shows how that model is built out of more
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fundamental pieces.
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