Re: [Caml-list] PPX is harmful to our community in the long term

["Hongbo Zhang (BLOOMBERG/ 731 LEX)" <hzhang295@bloomberg.net>]

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Yes, I agree it's useful , and that's why I wrote hundreds of thousands of lines of code in syntactic meta-programming (camlp4, fan, ppx)
But in the end of day, the conclusion is the cost is just so huge that it should not be widely used, at least , it should not be *leaked* to end users. ( I remember I had a conversation with the original maintainer of camlp4, Nicolas, about 5 years ago, he had similar ideas with me)

----- Original Message -----
From: Serge Sivkov <ssp.mryau@gmail.com>
To: caml-list@inria.fr
At: 22-Apr-2017 08:49:40


Hence, my two cents: PPX has problems in cross-compilation use cases, but I suppose something like new tag in META can reslove this issue.
As for me, just ppx_deriving* by whitequark is yet one example of usefullness of PPX.

WBR, ssp

2017-04-22 5:10 GMT+06:00 Emilio Jesús Gallego Arias <e@x80.org>:

"Hongbo Zhang (BLOOMBERG/ 731 LEX)" <hzhang295@bloomberg.net> writes:

> Yes, that's exactly what I suggested in the beginning!

Maybe I interpret the word "harmful" differently, but IMVHO I have to
strongly disagree with your choice of subject in the original mail.

Not only PPX has not been harmful for me, but it has been a life-saver
tool that has enabled significant progress towards more productive
research.

"Hongbo Zhang (BLOOMBERG/ 731 LEX)" <hzhang295@bloomberg.net> writes:

> calling it 'madness' is disrespectful

Personally, I fully subscribe Yaron's message and I see nothing
disrespectful in suggesting that abandoning syntactic abstractions is a
very bad idea.

You wrote:

 "the OCaml library developer should avoid PPX as much as you can",

but if you meant:

 "PPX seems quite unstable these days, I wonder how could we improve
  long-term stability?"

I'd have to admit that message didn't reach to me.

Best regards!
Emilio

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