[erlang-questions] Why we need a -module() attribute?

[Richard A. O'Keefe]

On 25/02/16 1:53 pm, Loïc Hoguin wrote:
>
> A similar but larger pain point that's been rationalized by people 
> used to Erlang is the expression separators.

I take it you're referring to commas, semicolons, and full stops.

We have a complete solution to that called LFE.

We also have Elixir, which has enough syntactic weirdness of its own
that I decided not to use it.

I briefly played with a Haskell-inspired syntax for Erlang, which I still
think would be a good idea.  One thing I certainly kept in that design
was -module directives because of the good they do.

I wouldn't say that I've *rationalised* the issue, just that I stopped
falling off that particular bike very very quickly.

I don't think there is any point in trying to "fix" Erlang syntax as it
stands.  I *do* think there is point in developing a whole *new* 
self-consistent
syntax from the ground up, just like D didn't so much fix C's syntax as
replace it.

(By the way, am I the only person here who remembers that Algol 68
used ";" for sequence and "," for parallel?  Hands up everyone on the
list who has an Algol 68 implementation on their machine.)