Comment by happytoexplain 13 hours ago
>3.days - 4.months + 1.hour
Is this what it looks like? A specific concept like time units being defined as members of more general types like numbers? I.e. if I type `1.` to get auto-complete, am I going to see days, and all the rest, as options?? That API design pattern would be a nightmare!
Why write in this dismissive tone? Regardless of your personal situation, it would be hard to believe you don't share the common knowledge that virtually everybody uses auto-complete to some degree, e.g. to remember, discover, or abbreviate type/instance methods, argument lists, etc. And why is "API" in quotes? It's very normal to refer to interfaces in languages/platforms as APIs (e.g. "JavaScript's Date API").
Regardless, whether or not a person uses autocomplete for this API is irrelevant - in this case it would be anybody using numbers for things outside this API, and maximally it would be the whole platform if this design pattern is not unique to this API. I.e. the simplicity of this one API has no bearing on the question.
In Ruby, I assume this is done by monkey patching, so yes, it would have all the issues you mention and fear.
In more modern languages like Kotlin, there is a notion of extension methods and properties, where you would be able to write a library that allows this syntax, but the .days property would only be accessible in files where you have explicitly imported it (so basically a synthetic sugar for a static function call).