Re: Built-in binning functions

On 01/09/14 06:00, Tom Lane wrote:
> Simon Riggs <simon(at)2ndquadrant(dot)com> writes:
>> Suggest discretize() as a much more informative name. The other names
>> will be overlooked by anybody that doesn't already know what to look
>> for.
> I did not like that idea to begin with, but it's growing more attractive.
> In particular, I think it would be unique enough that we could safely
> mark the polymorphic function as variadic (a move that would cause
> ambiguity issues for pretty nearly any user-defined function of the
> same name).
>
> OTOH, I'm not as convinced as you that this name would mean anything
> to "anybody that doesn't already know what to look for". It still
> seems like rather arcane terminology.
>
> regards, tom lane
>
>
If I was new to PostgreSQL, I'd probably read this as disc*(), a
function to do something with discs.

I have done finite maths and statistics at university, plus I have been
vaguely following this thread - but, the meaning of discretize() is not
immediately apparent to me (if I reread a previous email or 2 in this
thread, then I'm sure it would then be obvious!). I might guess that it
is to make something discrete, but why would I want to do that? So if I
came across this function in a year or 2, I'd probably go right past it.

I have been programming for over 40 years, and I still find choosing
appropriate names sometimes very difficult, so I know it is not easy to
come up with meaningful names - especially ones that mean something
relevant to other people!

Cheers,
Gavin