Re: convincing management to switch to Ocaml

[John Skaller <skaller@maxtal.com.au>]

At 15:03 31/08/99 -0400, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>Caml (like SML and Pascal and C and ...) has taken the point of view
>that begin/end entities should not be made mandatory if they are
>unambiguously unneeded.  I can only agree with that point of view:
>why should I say
>	
>	if a then (1) else (2)
>
>? 

	Why not:

	if a then q else 2 fi

>You could also try to rely on your programming environment to
>help you.  

	I do. (But I'm using Vim :-)

>> 	(fun x -> print_endline ..)
>> is ugly compared to:
>> 	begin fun x -> print_endline .. end
>
>Aesthetics is in the eye of the beholder.  

	This is very true, and a fundamental problem for publishing.
Intent is important too: what works fine on my screen is not quite
the same as what looks good on paper.

>> but the ideal would be
>> 	fun x is print_endline .. efun
>
>Plop!  Yet another reserved keyword!

	.. which is not good, I agree.

>Syntax is one of those things that you just can't get right.

	There is some truth in that, however, many would
claim that, for example, the syntax of C++ or Perl,
compared with say Python, is indeed superior.

-------------------------------------------------------
John Skaller    email: skaller@maxtal.com.au
		http://www.maxtal.com.au/~skaller
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