Re: [Caml-list] ReasonML concrete syntax

[Evgeny Khramtsov <xramtsov@gmail.com>]

Mon, 18 Dec 2017 17:00:33 +0000
Jesper Louis Andersen <jesper.louis.andersen@gmail.com> wrote:

> FWIW, I think the Erlang community is greatly benefiting from the
> Elixir community and vice versa. I'd hope the same thing happens with
> ReasonML and OCaml.  

I disagree. Those requests in my bugtracker "Make it work with Elixir"
are annoying.

> Elixir got a pretty firm ground to stand on since you have many years
> of (industrial) backing in the Erlang ecosystem. But a lot of the
> better improvements in the quality-of-life of a programmer is a
> direct result of Elixir's core team wanting to improve notation,
> error reporting and so on for the developer. These changes are
> definitely improving Erlang as well.  

I don't see this as an improvement to Erlang. This can be considered
by some as an improvement *over* Erlang, but in fact Elixir community
doesn't bring anything back. I'm maintaining software with around 20
dependencies, none of them are in Elixir.

> I think it is wrong to see these things as "wars". People, when
> programming, are subjective and prefer different notations. I've
> always been partial to statically typed ML languages such as OCaml
> and Standard ML, and I find their notation more clear than e.g., the
> Erlang or Haskell notation[0]. But judging by people in general,
> '{' / '}' bracketed notation stemming from a language such a C looks
> to be extremely popular and familar to people. To the point where
> "Erlang syntax is ugly", in which as much is misunderstood about its
> semantics as are its syntax.  

My point is actually the syntax doesn't matter a lot. There are really
great underrated languages because of this bias (Red/System is such an
example, where the code `f x (g y)` could be written as `f x g y`, i.e.
without brackets at all). But I have a problem learning new syntax just
to appease the majority. And seems like now I have to do this, simply
because the job market has changed. What if I say you must learn
Reason, like it or not?

> The key point is that you have a large group of programmers, mostly
> Javascript, Python or Ruby people, who would never ever pick up
> Erlang due to its syntax. But they'll gladly pick Elixir as their
> core language. All we have to teach them is proper error handling
> Erlang/OTP style and they'll easily give back to the community at
> large. If there are a good argument for diversity in an ecosystem,
> this is really it.  

Yah, like, increasing userbase on 2%. Sounds great :)

> [0] I may be "Erlang user of the year, 2017", and have many years of
> Erlang experience, but I've always lamented that the language has no
> static type system.  

Lacking the type system is definitely one of the main disadvantages of
Erlang (or Elixir), I agree.