From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id WAA16164; Tue, 29 Oct 2002 22:43:04 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from nez-perce.inria.fr (nez-perce.inria.fr [192.93.2.78]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id WAA16237 for ; Tue, 29 Oct 2002 22:43:04 +0100 (MET) Received: from grace.speakeasy.org (grace.speakeasy.org [216.254.0.2]) by nez-perce.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with SMTP id g9TLh1D17218 for ; Tue, 29 Oct 2002 22:43:02 +0100 (MET) Received: (qmail 15300 invoked by uid 36130); 29 Oct 2002 21:42:58 -0000 Received: from localhost (sendmail-bs@127.0.0.1) by localhost with SMTP; 29 Oct 2002 21:42:58 -0000 Date: Tue, 29 Oct 2002 13:42:58 -0800 (PST) From: brogoff@speakeasy.net To: "caml-list@inria.fr" Subject: Re: [Caml-list] CamlP4 Revised syntax comment In-Reply-To: <57FACEC6-EB6A-11D6-A87E-0003938819CE@inria.fr> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk I agree with Gerard's comments about using the list as a ballot box for Revised changes, as well as his other comments. I dismissed backward compatibility issues as a negative in my proposal about "=", and that was probably too strong. It would have been better if I'd said that this constraint is weaker than in classic OCaml. No doubt the constraints about syntax changes in classic OCaml are weaker than in an ANSI or ISO standard, or even a standard like SML. There does need to be a way for Revised users to discuss aspects of the syntax in order that the designer (Daniel) gets some feedback. It would be more fruitful if contributors could provide reasons for why they favor a particular syntactic choice, and if they can list the negatives. One thing that always impressed me about some of the Ada designers was that they were quite adept at arguing convincingly against their own pet proposals. I particularly like Daniel's efforts at providing justification for his decisions in the tutorial. One thing that's still missing is a "theory of what makes a good syntax for a programming language". I think it's obvious that such a theory would have to account for the fact that a good shell syntax isn't a good syntax for a more general purpose language (there are many more categories than just these two!) and that such a theory would be largely heuristic, with incompatible rules, like the principles of good chess play, but still useful. -- Brian ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners