Re: [Caml-list] The rec/nonrec debate

[Dario Teixeira <darioteixeira@yahoo.com>]

Hi,

> IME the OCaml convention is an endless source of confusion for

> programmers coming from other languages.  For example compared to
> C++'s vector<T>.
> 
> By the way, why does Mezzo have to be a completely new language?
> Just change the syntax of OCaml and force people to put:

Well, the Mezzo team can correct me on this, but my impression is that
Mezzo is a research project in a preliminary stage.  They have a new
type system based on permissions, which seems like an interesting
approach to manage side-effects without the disadvantages of monads
or the solutions used by languages such as Clean or Disciple.  But of
course, the question remains whether this new approach will prove to
be convenient in practice.  There's always the risk of straying too much
away from the convenience of ML, and creating a type system which
though more powerful than ML's, has the disadvantage that requires too
many type annotations (type inference may not be easy in your new
type system), or produces undecipherable error messages...

In any case, Mezzo is very different from OCaml, so it makes sense
to call it a new language.  And while they're at it, it also makes sense
to start afresh with a cleaner syntax which incorporates the lessons
that the Caml community learnt over the past couple of decades --
like rec/nonrec/shadowing situation, or making type and value
declarations uniformly head-first.

Cheers,
Dario