Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2014 May 4

= May 4 =

What does 'You're done!' mean?
Hi, What does You're done! really mean? Does it mean You've done something perfectly?-- Jos   eph   16:01, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * In what context? AndyTheGrump (talk) 16:05, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Either you've completed your task, you're fired, the medical procedure you were undergoing is finished, you've been roasted to 140F internally, and are ready to be eaten, or I will soon kill you. μηδείς (talk) 17:56, 4 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Or maybe "You'll never _____ in this town again!" Started as a Hollywood thing, where the blank was "work", but it's been played on many times since. Basically means you've been blacklisted. InedibleHulk (talk) 18:26, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * Or maybe "Your haircut/dental work is finished. Please pay me handsomely and go away".  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  19:53, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * If you hear someone saying it to a horse, they probably mean "You're dun!" If it's directed at someone trying to pass themselves off as Kix Brooks or Timothy Well instead, that's Dunn. If you hear a fisherman talking to his bait, he's possibly using a mayfly subimago (and probably drugs). InedibleHulk (talk) 20:58, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * What if I used it on a tutorial post? I mean in a tutorial post in a website or blog.. eg: Click on OK. Aha! You're done! If I use it like this, does it mean, you've completed it.-- Jos   eph   17:29, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Yes. It would be taken to mean that the task is completed and you can continue on to other things.  Dismas |(talk) 18:17, 5 May 2014 (UTC)

On Wikipedia, we sometimes say Done. Green is sort of the standard colour of success. Traffic lights, money, vegetation, power meters, additions in edit histories; if you see green, "You're done!" is a good thing. If you see red with it, you're probably done having fun (at least for a while). InedibleHulk (talk) 03:05, 6 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I have an acquaintance, Don Dunn. On the weekends he walks across the local four-lane highway to breakfast with friends at McDonalds.  I almost hit him one day, which allowed me to inform those who know him that I had almost run Don Dunn down. μηδείς (talk) 03:53, 7 May 2014 (UTC)


 * As noted in EO, "done" is a synonym for "finished", which can be either good or bad depending on the situation. And EO also notes the southernism, which would revise Medeis' comment to "I almost done run Don Dunn down." ←Baseball Bugs What's up, Doc? carrots→ 08:00, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * E.g. "A man is not complete without a wife. Once he's married, he's finished" (Zsa Zsa Gabor).  --   Jack of Oz   [pleasantries]  08:35, 7 May 2014 (UTC)
 * In "Mom and Pop Art", Marge Simpson asks Bart if Homer is finished setting up the new barbecue. After watching his dad make a last-ditch charge at the pile of parts with a patio umbrella and collapse in defeat, he concludes, "Yeah, he's done." InedibleHulk (talk) 07:45, 8 May 2014 (UTC)

’grammer grammar
(I almost put this on the Computing Desk.)

Presumably some computer programmers prefer to write in languages that have not lost most of their verb endings. When a subroutine's name is a verb, is it imperative, infinitive, stem or something else? Are there customs, style wars, or indifference? —Tamfang (talk) 20:34, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I think brevity wins over anything else just about every time. So you might have "CircleDraw" instead of "CircleDrawing", "CircleDrawer", "CircleConstruction", etc.  (If you need to type anything repeatedly, it's important that it be short, and you are also less likely to make an error.) I'd also tend to put the verb first, so it would be "DrawCircle" instead of "CircleDraw".  There might also be some abbreviation, so more like "DrwCirc", although I tend to avoid that, because then you have to remember exactly how you abbreviated it. StuRat (talk) 21:19, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I think Tamfang's asking about programming in other languages than English. Would a French programmer call a function "dessin", "dessiner", "dessinez" or something else? I would guess "dessiner", but that is only a guess. --ColinFine (talk) 21:38, 4 May 2014 (UTC)


 * I'm not sure about programming languages, but for menu options, like "save" and "load," French always uses the infinitive.


 * As you're probably aware, English-based programming languages are pretty standard throughout the world, regardless of the programmer's native language, so Non-English-based programming languages are usually the exception rather than the norm. In Dutch, even though infinitives are normally used for menu items, the imperative is the only form I've seen used in programming languages (forms like "maak", "herhaal", "schrijf"). French seems to be the same, see e.g. in documentation for Linotte; it uses forms like "Attache", "Retourne", "Attends". ( Although both in French and in Dutch the first person singular present (as in 'I know') is identical in form to the imperative singular, the former is never used without a pronoun, so the forms used in programming must be imperatives ) - Lindert (talk) 18:26, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * Linotte is aprogramming language for children, that why the imperative singular is used. Usually verbs at infinitive are used for methods and procedures, names are used for classes, etc. (see examples in) — AldoSyrt (talk) 14:12, 6 May 2014 (UTC)
 * But the question seems not to be about the language per se, but about the programmer's choice of identifier names (especially functions/methods/procedures). --Trovatore (talk) 22:50, 5 May 2014 (UTC)
 * In German infinitive and imperative differ. For a subroutine's name you can use both, whereas the infinitive is more neutral and formal, the imperative is informal. More often subroutines' names in German are constructed as infinitive clauses of the type (noun + infinitive of verb1), (noun + infinitive of verb2) and so on. In this case the noun will dominate the sorting of the subroutines' names. --Pp.paul.4 (talk) 22:47, 5 May 2014 (UTC)