[Caml-list] syntax foo

[james woodyatt <jhw@wetware.com>]

everyone--

I have been keeping my opinions on this subject to myself in the hopes 
that it would not be *me* who would initiate a debate I'm sure many will 
find unwelcome.  Now that the subject has come up and everyone who 
really wants to opt out has written mail filters, I feel safe to join.

I've studied the revised syntax.  I've studied and mastered the standard 
syntax.  Here's what I think about them:

	+ The standard syntax is weird.  But it's not half as weird as 
Perl.  I come from Perl culture.  I am not here to complain about syntax.

	+ The revised syntax is clean.  But it feels "chunky"-- I see a lot 
more brackets and braces.  I've grown accustomed to the free-verse style 
available in the standard syntax, even if it is weird.  But I am not 
here to complain about syntax.

	+ Like with Ocaml, I learned Perl 5 on my own time.  They're 
changing the syntax again in Perl 6.  I plan to learn Perl 6 only when 
I'm paid for it.

	+ With the inclusion of camlp4 in the distribution, I don't have to 
care about the syntax of the language.  There's a parser and a printer 
to handle any conversions I may ever need to make.  If there isn't, I 
can write one.  In the end, the syntax is irrelevant; it's the semantics 
I care about.  I am not here to complain about syntax.

Here's why I don't want to see the Ocaml team make any changes to the 
syntax: I'm certain they have more important things they could be 
doing.  Like, for example, support for dynamic loading of native code on 
Mac OS X.


--
j h woodyatt <jhw@wetware.com>
"...the antidote to misinformation is more information, not less."
                                                      --vinton cerf

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