I’ve been working on shaving off the rough corners in the C3 syntax for version 0.5, and one of the changes I'm likely to make is replacing variant and anyerr with any and anyfault

"variant" was originally chosen because it wasn't intended for frequent use – unlike most any types in other languages. In addition I liked the idea that "any" could be used as a variable name.

As for anyerr, it was chosen while I still called the failure result error. anyerr was than Zig’s anyerror and I've in general been happy with the name. The abbreviation doesn't affect readability or clarity.

As the optional/result semantics matured however, it became increasingly clear that error (or a shorter "err") made a bad keyword. With its novel semantics it doesn't quite represent an error, and it was important to highlight this. That was why the keyword was changed to fault instead of error.

I wasn't sure about fault, so I tried variants of it - including reusing enums (enum MyResult : anyerr { ... }), but everything I tried was in practice less clear than fault.

So to avoid too many different terms anyfault is likely going to replace anyerr. While I would have liked to shorten it, I've found no good way to abbreviate “fault” (unlike “error” -> "err"). Fortunately, anyerr/anyfault is not used frequently. Currently in the standard library it is just used in two locations. This is in contrast with Zig, where anyerror is a common return type.

The experiment using variant rather than any largely failed: I never really needed any as a variable name, and where the type was used variant felt less clear than any would have been.

This also gives the language a consistent pair:

any
anyfault

While consistency in name isn't a requirement, it's always nice to have when you can.

Most importantly, the lesson here is that it is fine to pick some keywords and try them out, and its fine to change them. Neither anyfault nor any were choices I could know were "right" from the beginning. Rather, they are choices that only experience could reveal.

Don't expect your first syntax and keyword choices to be the best ones, but also you need to decide on something to get started. No matter how much bikeshedding you do, you can't really predict the feel of a choice until you try it for real.