docs: Add section with design choices (#105)

* Add section with design choices

* Fix typos

* Update docs/design.md

Co-authored-by: Michał Stęchły <michal.stechly@gmail.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Michał Stęchły <michal.stechly@gmail.com>

docs/design.md

@@ -0,0 +1,150 @@
+# Design choices
+
+## Using lists instead of mappings
+
+One of the most controversial choices we have made in QREF is the choice of
+using lists instead of mappings (a.k.a. dictionaries) for objects that
+should have an unique name. This choice affects:
+
+- Children of a `Routine`.
+- Ports of a `Routine`.
+
+For instance, why did we chose to represent ports like this:
+
+```yaml
+ports:
+  - {"name": "in_0", "direction": "input", "size": 2},
+  - {"name": "out_0", "direction": "output", "size": "N"}
+```
+
+instead of this:
+
+```yaml
+ports:
+  in_0: {"direction": "input", "size": 2}
+  out_0: {"direction": "output", "size": "N"}
+```
+?
+
+The answer is purely pragmatic. On the one hand, using mappings
+instead of lists would guarantee uniqueness of names of ports
+and children. But, on the other hand, it would give a false
+sense of security. To see why, consider the following example
+Python code, which loads an incorrect definition of ports:
+
+```python
+import yaml
+
+data = """
+ports:
+  in_0: {"direction": "input", "size": 2}
+  in_0: {"direction": "input", "size": "N"}
+"""
+
+print(yaml.safe_load(data))
+```
+
+If you are new to parsing YAML (or JSON) in Python you might be
+surprised that the code runs at all - after all shouldn't keys
+in YAML mappings be unique? Well they should, but most parsers
+will just load the last key if the duplicates are present. The
+code above prints:
+
+```text
+{'ports': {'in_0': {'direction': 'input', 'size': 'N'}}}
+```
+
+So, suppose you are editing a QREF file. You made a mistake and
+used the same port name twice. If we used mapping, your file would
+load fine, but you would lose one entry. Importantly, from your
+code's perspective you wouldn't even know - you would just get
+a dictionary with unique keys. Debugging problems that could arise
+in this way would be a nightmare, and we want to save all of us
+such hurdles.
+
+Now, what happens if we use lists? Let's try the following code:
+
+```python
+import yaml
+
+data = """
+ports:
+  - {"name": "in_0", "direction": "input", "size": 2}
+  - {"name": "in_0", "direction": "input", "size": "N"}
+"""
+
+print(yaml.safe_load(data))
+```
+
+This time, we get the following output:
+```text
+{'ports': [{'name': 'in_0', 'direction': 'input', 'size': 2}, {'name': 'in_0', 'direction': 'input', 'size': 'N'}]}
+```
+Now, we have ports with duplicate names, which is not good, but we
+are able to detect this and react e.g. by raising exception.
+No information was lost.
+
+The natural question to ask is: why won't we use dictionaries,
+and handle duplicate keys by customizing YAML (or JSON) parsers?
+We could do this, but keep in mind that QREF is mainly a
+data format. Different users can use different parsers and we
+want to make sure everyone gets consistent results no matter
+what parsing library they use.
+
+
+## Why isn't routine a top level object?
+
+The actual program you are representing in QREF is stored
+as `program` property of a top-level schema object, i.e.
+
+```yaml
+version: v1
+program:
+  name: my_program
+  children:
+    # ... 
+```
+You might wonder why wouldn't we just make the program a
+top-level object, or, in other words, why don't QREF
+documents look like this instead:
+
+```yaml
+version: v1
+name: my_program
+children:
+  # ...
+```
+
+There are essentially two reasons, but both of them
+have to do with the fact that we wanted our structure
+to be recursive.
+
+To quickly explain what recursive in this context means,
+let's think about `program` and its `children`. Both of
+them can be viewed as objects of the same type. The
+`program` is a *routine* which can contain other routines
+as its `children`. Each of the children can have
+other routines as their children etc. It's routines all
+the way down.
+
+Now, if we used a top-level object to represent a program,
+we face a problem - we need to include version only in
+this object and not in the children. Therefore we would
+have to create a separate type for the main program
+and separate one for subroutines. This would have the
+following consequences, listed in the order of importance:
+
+- The JSON schema would no longer be recursive, and thus
+  would contain more definitions, which simply means
+  it would be more complex and harder to read.
+- The hierarchy of our Pydantic models would get slightly
+  more complex.
+
+We don't mind putting effort into creating more complex
+hierarchy of models if it would add usability. However, we
+think that having the JSON schema as simple as possible
+is beneficial to the users (especially considering that
+QREF is mostly a data format!), and thus we made a choice
+of using the recursive type hierarchy.
+
+

mkdocs.yml

@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ nav:
           - qref.schema_v1: library/reference/qref.schema_v1.md
           - qref.experimental.rendering: library/reference/qref.experimental.rendering.md
   - development.md
+  - design.md
 theme:
   name: material
   palette: