Re: [Caml-list] Equality between abstract type definitions

[Roberto Di Cosmo <roberto@dicosmo.org>]

Wow, I did not expect to be spawning such a long exchange with my
request of information on what appears surprising in type annotations
as they are used today in OCaml, but all in all, I don't regret it,
as it brought up a lot of useful information, that I'll refrain from
summarising here: I just want to thank sincerely everybody for all the
comments, as I actually ended up learning a lot here, and I believe
I am not alone.

Let me offer, though, a general comment which goes beyond the specific scope of
this thread: of course incompatible changes to a language can be done, and
have been regularly done in the past of our preferred language, with the
wonderful CamlLight/CSL/OCaml team providing auto-magic converters that
reduced somehow the pain of the transition.

But I believe that such changes should only be made after a very careful
and thorough consideration of their advantages and impact: it cannot just
be motivated by the fact that a part of the user community finds a certain
notation more or less intuitive than another, as another part of the
community may feel exactly the opposite.

-- 
Roberto
 
------------------------------------------------------------------
Professeur               En delegation a l'INRIA
PPS                      E-mail: roberto@dicosmo.org
Universite Paris Diderot WWW  : http://www.dicosmo.org
Case 7014                Tel  : ++33-(0)1-57 27 92 20
5, Rue Thomas Mann       
F-75205 Paris Cedex 13   Identica: http://identi.ca/rdicosmo
FRANCE.                  Twitter: http://twitter.com/rdicosmo
------------------------------------------------------------------
Attachments:
MIME accepted, Word deprecated
      http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.html
------------------------------------------------------------------
Office location:
 
Bureau 3020 (3rd floor)
Batiment Sophie Germain
Avenue de France
Metro Bibliotheque Francois Mitterrand, ligne 14/RER C
-----------------------------------------------------------------
GPG fingerprint 2931 20CE 3A5A 5390 98EC 8BFC FCCA C3BE 39CB 12D3