[erlang-questions] Erlang Syntax - again

Yariv Sadan yarivsadan@REDACTED
Tue Mar 11 07:40:53 CET 2008


Hi Robert,

I think the "issues" with Erlang's syntax are quite overblown. They
took me about a day to master and I hardly notice any of them when I'm
actually writing and editing code. I certainly don't want Erlang to
look any more like Java/C than it does now. I'm pretty happy with the
Erlang syntax (I also think that LFE provides a very interesting
option for those who are curious about Lisp :) )

The main change I would like to see is to have the compiler
automatically infer the types of record variables (when possible) to
shorten the amount of code required for accessing their properties. I
created an unfinished solution here:
http://code.google.com/p/recless/. This page has a couple of examples
for how it could be used.

I would also like to be able to overload macro names with different
arities and to have some mechanism for introspecting the properties of
records and accessing them dynamically at runtime.

Best regards,
Yariv


2008/3/10 Robert Virding <rvirding@REDACTED>:
> Hello all,
>
> I have read Damien's post and Yariv's reply. My question is: they say what
> they don't want, but what do they actually want? I mean this question
> seriously. Perhaps someone who is new to the language could answer and tell
> what they found most difficult when learning the syntax. I have spoken
> Erlang so long that I see it as natural, warts and all.
>
> Even records look like they do for a specific reason and it is harder than
> you would think to change them. Other Erlang features force issues.
>
> Getting back. What do people want? Do they want something that looks like
> Java, or C++, or Python, or Perl, or ... ? This is actually possible to do,
> BUT (there is always a but) you would not have the Java or C++ or Python or
> ... semantics, you would still have Erlang semantics. Would we then get
> complaints that while it looks like Java it doesn't behave like Java, and
> why not?
>
> As I said I am serious about this question, even if we don't do a JFE (Java
> Flavoured Erlang) it would be interesting to know what people want. Do
> people know what they want? Is or is it just that it looks and behaves
> differently to what they are used?
>
> Robert
>
>
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