New EEP draft: Pinning operator ^ in patterns

Nicolas Martyanoff khaelin@REDACTED
Tue Jan 19 11:18:58 CET 2021


On 2021-01-18 22:22, Raimo Niskanen wrote:
> As I read that blog post, most problems with the Erlang semantics that José
> lists would be remedied, if Erlang should have had a mandatory syntax for
> matching a variable.

I am really puzzled by this kind of reasoning. Developers who believe that
the way bindings and matching works in Erlang is a problem and that Elixir
fixed it are free to use Elixir.

It is really disturbing to see a small number of developers trying to force
this change down everyone's throat even though the reactions are mostly
negative. At this point, I agree with Ivan Uemlianin that "pushing it through
would damage the community".

To conclude: everyone knows that Erlang is not perfect: lots of things could
be improved in both the language and the standard library. But changing a
language, especially things as fundamental as bindings and scoping rules, is a
huge deal with lots of consequences. Erlang is known and loved for its
simplicity and stability. Developers who wanted a different syntax and did not
mind this kind of change already moved to Elixir. It is fine! There is
something for everyone, please stop trying to change what the majority uses
and likes.

-- 
Nicolas Martyanoff
http://snowsyn.net
khaelin@REDACTED


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