Re: [Caml-list] Newbie comment on constructor syntax

[Hendrik Boom <hendrik@topoi.pooq.com>]

On Mon, Nov 09, 2015 at 10:11:30PM +0100, Gabriel Scherer wrote:
> On Mon, Nov 9, 2015 at 7:16 PM, Andreas Rossberg <rossberg@mpi-sws.org> wrote:
> > Hm, I see your point, but don't you already introduce that problem (i.e.,
> > commit to tuples) by allowing the `C x` sugar for n-ary constructors?
> > Because in a world of curried constructors, `x` would not be typed as the
> > tuple of arguments, but only as the first argument of the constructor.
> 
> Yes, it is already problematic, and in fact I'm personally not
> completely convinced by this feature -- Alain it "reduces bad
> surprises for beginners", but I suspect that adding more magic in this
> place could not actually help that much -- at least the current
> semantic model is simple.

If you're looking for a beginner mode that eliminates most surprises, 
the easiest change is to require more explicit type annotations.  Foe 
example, one could require the types of function parameters to be 
explicitly specified.

I find thta this policy makes my code substantially clearer, both to me 
and to the compiler.

--hendrik