Awesome reference! In fact, I was going to write that the interpretation with positions is "geometric" or "spatial", as opposed to "ordinal", but then I thought the analogy might be a little far-fetched so I left it out.

EDIT: I just remembered reading about Caroline Rose in Andy Hertzfeld diary: http://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Inside_Macintosh....

This passage was especially remarkable:

    Pretty soon, I figured out that if Caroline had trouble
    understanding something, it probably meant that the 
    design was flawed. On a number of occasions, I told her
    to come back tomorrow after she asked a penetrating 
    question, and revised the API to fix the flaw that she 
    had pointed out.

It should be a reminder that to the engineer who wrote the API everything is obvious in retrospect, even the inconsistent or poorly thought details. A fresh set of (smart) eyes is essential to bring some perspective.