71–80 of 140 posts
Weak arguments in the article with badly chosen examples. If one wanted to criticize OCaml syntax, the need for .mli-files (with different syntax for function signatures) and the rather clunky module/signature syntax would be better candidates.
As a matter of policy can HN please not accept submissions with non-https URLs? It's a checkbox at most web hosts, built in to many reverse proxies, etc. There's no excuse for not offering htttps, particularly since it places users at risk if at any point along the path between them and you, there's someone untrustworthy.
It's a strange take that a possibility to write unformatted code means syntax sucks. I've read other articles and there is other weird stuff. Like Java has perfect syntax because on one line you could do so less. In the mean time modern "functional" (or "monadic") style java is a chained mess with ridiculously long lines.
> In the mean time modern "functional" (or "monadic") style java is a chained mess with ridiculously long lines. I have seen many devs that prefer the Java imperative style over more functional chained style. Could be an outcome of leetcode style interviews or that most CS programs start with C/python/Java style languages but it's not uncommon to see that preference especially among junior devs
The title is a little inflammatory. The critique is specifically about Ocaml’s handling of let-bindings. AFAICT OP thinks the syntax sucks because: 1. there’s no marker to indicate the end of let scopes 2. functions are bound with the same syntax as constants He asserts that this is confusing. In practice - for the many issues I have with Ocaml! - neither of these are actual issues, in my experience, once code format…
Very often this leads to typing errors. Otherwise it's caught by autoformat (which everyone should be using). But even without that, this is one pitfall every OCaml developer is aware of.
I'm not arguing the syntax is perfect, but I wouldn't say it has a serious problem because of that. Never seen that being a problem.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Fortunately, the OCaml compiler is very modular, and there have been efforts to make things more... reasonable. - Reason, a different syntactic frontend for regular OCaml: https://reasonml.github.io/ - ReScript, a language with OCaml semantics that compiles into: JS https://rescript-lang.org/ (I suppose it's a reincarnation of js-of-ocaml).
ReScript is better described as a descendant (and fork) of ReasonML aimed to fit into the JS ecosystem. In contrast to js_of_ocaml, ReScript prioritizes interoperability with existing JS code and APIs over interop with existing OCaml code, whereas js_of_ocaml takes the opposite approach. So people looking for an improved version of JavaScript or TypeScript should probably choose ReScript, but people who are porting a…
ReScript isnt a fork of Reason, jsoo focuses only on compiling all OCaml and allows JS interop
Reason with Melange is a viable option for JS/TS devs.
The title is a little inflammatory. The critique is specifically about Ocaml’s handling of let-bindings. AFAICT OP thinks the syntax sucks because: 1. there’s no marker to indicate the end of let scopes 2. functions are bound with the same syntax as constants He asserts that this is confusing. In practice - for the many issues I have with Ocaml! - neither of these are actual issues, in my experience, once code format…
Yes, it's clearly one of the syntax weak point. You can surround them with parentheses or begin ... end to make things explicit but the default is definitely error prone.
The title is a little inflammatory. The critique is specifically about Ocaml’s handling of let-bindings. AFAICT OP thinks the syntax sucks because: 1. there’s no marker to indicate the end of let scopes 2. functions are bound with the same syntax as constants He asserts that this is confusing. In practice - for the many issues I have with Ocaml! - neither of these are actual issues, in my experience, once code format…
Fortunately, the OCaml compiler is very modular, and there have been efforts to make things more... reasonable. - Reason, a different syntactic frontend for regular OCaml: https://reasonml.github.io/ - ReScript, a language with OCaml semantics that compiles into: JS https://rescript-lang.org/ (I suppose it's a reincarnation of js-of-ocaml).
There is a reason - pun intended - it didn't take off at all with the community.
The author doesn't understand why OCaml (and Haskell, and many HM-derived languages) have let ... in ... at all, as opposed to having, say, just lambdas. That's because of a feature of Hindley–Milner type systems called let-polymorphism[1].
This is hard to see in OCaml if you are not intimately accustomed with HM type systems because definitions always use let, but in Haskell it's immediately clear that something more interesting is happening because regular definitions do not use let.
F#, which has been heavily inspired[2] by OCaml got rid of the in, rather it uses indentation to do automatic in insertion[2]. OCaml does not want to be indentation-aware.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindley–Milner_type_system#Let...
Worked on an ocaml codebase for two years. My advice is: choose a different language. It's just not a great dev experience in general
I've recently started a mini-project in OCaml, having some Haskell background. The worst thing so far is that you have to declare and define functions before using them. This results in unimportant utility functions being at the top, and the most important functions being at the bottom of a file. I haven't had much issue with let bindings, however that might be because my functions are fairly simple for now.
That's an extremely good thing.
Unordered definitions and where are some of Haskell worst decisions with lazy by default, overuse of operators and a community which sadly think point-free is desirable.
That's the kind of choices which makes Ocaml a lot more readable.