Re: [Caml-list] ReasonML concrete syntax

[Robert Muller <robert.muller2@gmail.com>]

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Apologies for igniting a bit of a syntax flame war; it wasn't my intention.
The Reason project is fantastic and I hope it's successful. I'm concerned
with teaching OCaml (or possibly Reason) not to JS programmers but to
first-year university students and to students being introduced to algebra.
(In the US, that means middle-school and high-school). I hope that to the
greatest extent possible, the use of parentheses in Reason will be
consistent with their most common use in algebra -- for grouping. OCaml
isn't perfect on this score but the n-argument function accepting an
n-tuple seems like the right thing. I'm hoping that I won't have to explain
to students things like

let add(m, n) = m + n
add(5)

or

let add((m, n)) = m + n

I feel that many of the Reason syntax diffs with OCaml are improvements but
this sort of thing is a step backward IMHO that won't be helpful to JS
programmers anyway.
Bob Muller


On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 12:10 PM, Yotam Barnoy <yotambarnoy@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Rust ditched its syntax before release in favor of a syntax more
> geared towards the kind of programmers they wanted to attract. This
> wasn't a bad decision.
>
> Many people on this mailing list seem to be unaware of the fact that
> Reason is really catching on. It's simply a human reality that we like
> to try things that are close to what we already know. Bringing OCaml's
> syntax close to a language like Javascript, which has countless
> developers nowadays, means that a much higher percentage of those
> people will want to try out OCaml/Reason. And ultimately, a language
> is only as good as its ecosystem -- having the best-designed language
> in the world is meaningless if only a few people are using it.
>
> I'm not one of those people who enjoys Reason's syntax (aside from the
> issues they fixed in OCaml's syntax), but I appreciate what the Reason
> people have done, and I expect Reason to soon eclipse OCaml in terms
> of number of users. I don't see this as a bad thing -- Reason's
> creators seem to really love OCaml and want to contribute back to the
> community.
>
> On Mon, Dec 11, 2017 at 11:47 AM, Viet Le <vietlq85@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Yawar, crediting the popularity of Rust because of syntax is misleading.
> > Mozilla has marketing budget and people behind Rust have build very
> active
> > community with weekly newsletter and know how to market. OCaml is mostly
> > used by academia and some industry players, and marketing is not being
> > emphasized.
> >
> > ReasonML is not gaining because of syntax, it's because of huge marketing
> > effort and easy to follow tutorials and examples and catchy websites.
> OCaml
> > documentation is as plain as plain can get. Rust has a few catchy
> websites,
> > tutorials and free books as well.
> >
> > Viet.
> >
> > On 11 December 2017 at 16:10, Ian Zimmerman <itz@very.loosely.org>
> wrote:
> >>
> >> On 2017-12-11 15:40, Gerd Stolpmann wrote:
> >>
> >> > although, with currified functions this is only an illusion
> >>
> >> As they say, "this".  The alternative syntax will lead to people never
> >> learning about partial application.
> >>
> >> Does your own language curry multiple arguments by default like Ocaml
> >> does?  If yes, then (IMO) your choice is a mistake, in spite of the
> >> (good) arguments you give for it.
> >>
> >> I would be more tolerant about such syntax in a SML-like language where
> >> multiple arguments are modelled with tuples in most cases.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Please don't Cc: me privately on mailing lists and Usenet,
> >> if you also post the followup to the list or newsgroup.
> >> To reply privately _only_ on Usenet, fetch the TXT record for the
> domain.
> >>
> >> --
> >> Caml-list mailing list.  Subscription management and archives:
> >> https://sympa.inria.fr/sympa/arc/caml-list
> >> Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners
> >> Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Kind regards,
> > Viet
>
> --
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