4 ms·

Pattern matching seems to be very trendy/popular right now. It's a big jump from JS, but https://reasonml.github.io https://reasonml.github.io has very nice pat

by m0meni 8y ago

Pattern matching seems to be very trendy/popular right now. It's a big jump from JS, but https://reasonml.github.io https://reasonml.github.io has very nice pattern matching that you can use, and it integrates with the JS ecosystem very nicely.

adamnemecek 8y ago
It's been "trendy" since the 70's. It's more that more people have experience with it and realize that pattern matching is like conditional statements on steroids.
- m0meni 8y ago
  Fair point. What I was trying to express was that it seems like the JS ecosystem has really been pushing and encouraging functional programming in a big way, which speaks to your idea that more people have experience with it.
- lmm 8y ago
  > It's been "trendy" since the 70's. It's been possible since the '70s but I've seen a lot more talking about it in the last 5-10 years.
  - stiGGG 8y ago
    Yeah, this applies to all that old Lisp features.
    - _delirium 8y ago
      I think of full-featured pattern matching as a fairly recent addition even to Lisp. Lisp has had some pattern-matching constructs forever of course (cond, destructuring-bind, Norvig's sexp matcher from PAIP [1], etc.). But it's only with the more recent emergence of optima [2] as a de-facto standard that it now has really good pattern matching. It was probably the #1 thing I missed in Lisp, after having used ML a bit, until optima came along. [1] https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp/blob/master/lisp/patmatch.lisp https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp/blob/master/lisp/patmatc... [2] https://github.com/m2ym/optima https://github.com/m2ym/optima
      - lispm 8y ago
        The first embedded language for programming with patterns for Lisp was implemented 1962 by Daniel Bobrow. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6106 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6106
    - masklinn 8y ago
      AFAIK pattern-matching is not a historical Lisp feature, it's usually been limited to simple destructuring. In the modern acception of tree patterns (as opposed to text patterns aka regular expressions), I guess it comes from ML (and possibly prolog but prolog's unification goes even further?): it doesn't look like ISWIM had tree patterns and I can't find older references.
      - lispm 8y ago
        In Lisp pattern-based programming has been first implemented in 1962 in by D.Bobrow (METEOR). From then on there are many implementations of pattern matching in Lisp based software, from Planner, to rule-based systems, LISP70 (Tesler, ...)...
        Roboprog 8y ago
        This makes me sad. As somebody who started a CS degree back in the early 80s (finishing in the late 80s), and who had a few glimpses of languages which didn’t suck, the switch down to “everything is an 8086 running C code, if not x86 assembler” was an incredibly destructive event in this industry. I was going to specialize in AI in my major, but I guess it was about 25 years too early. But that’s another tangent.
      - kbp 8y ago
        > AFAIK pattern-matching is not a historical Lisp feature Aside from full packages like what lispm mentioned, implementing pattern matching (and later, full Prolog-style unification) in Lisp is a very common exercise in beginner Lisp textbooks, going back decades.
    - lmm 8y ago
      I'd say it's less about Lisp and more that the ML lineage is finally getting its day in the sun (and not before time).
faitswulff 8y ago
IIRC, a big blocker to adopting ReasonML for a lot of people is its current lack of async / await support: https://github.com/facebook/reason/issues/1321 https://github.com/facebook/reason/issues/1321

by m0meni 8y ago

adamnemecek 8y ago

It's been "trendy" since the 70's. It's more that more people have experience with it and realize that pattern matching is like conditional statements on steroids.

m0meni 8y ago
Fair point. What I was trying to express was that it seems like the JS ecosystem has really been pushing and encouraging functional programming in a big way, which speaks to your idea that more people have experience with it.
lmm 8y ago
> It's been "trendy" since the 70's. It's been possible since the '70s but I've seen a lot more talking about it in the last 5-10 years.
- stiGGG 8y ago
  Yeah, this applies to all that old Lisp features.
  - _delirium 8y ago
    I think of full-featured pattern matching as a fairly recent addition even to Lisp. Lisp has had some pattern-matching constructs forever of course (cond, destructuring-bind, Norvig's sexp matcher from PAIP [1], etc.). But it's only with the more recent emergence of optima [2] as a de-facto standard that it now has really good pattern matching. It was probably the #1 thing I missed in Lisp, after having used ML a bit, until optima came along. [1] https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp/blob/master/lisp/patmatch.lisp https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp/blob/master/lisp/patmatc... [2] https://github.com/m2ym/optima https://github.com/m2ym/optima
    - lispm 8y ago
      The first embedded language for programming with patterns for Lisp was implemented 1962 by Daniel Bobrow. https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6106 https://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/6106
  - masklinn 8y ago
    AFAIK pattern-matching is not a historical Lisp feature, it's usually been limited to simple destructuring. In the modern acception of tree patterns (as opposed to text patterns aka regular expressions), I guess it comes from ML (and possibly prolog but prolog's unification goes even further?): it doesn't look like ISWIM had tree patterns and I can't find older references.
    - lispm 8y ago
      In Lisp pattern-based programming has been first implemented in 1962 in by D.Bobrow (METEOR). From then on there are many implementations of pattern matching in Lisp based software, from Planner, to rule-based systems, LISP70 (Tesler, ...)...
      - Roboprog 8y ago
        This makes me sad. As somebody who started a CS degree back in the early 80s (finishing in the late 80s), and who had a few glimpses of languages which didn’t suck, the switch down to “everything is an 8086 running C code, if not x86 assembler” was an incredibly destructive event in this industry. I was going to specialize in AI in my major, but I guess it was about 25 years too early. But that’s another tangent.
    - kbp 8y ago
      > AFAIK pattern-matching is not a historical Lisp feature Aside from full packages like what lispm mentioned, implementing pattern matching (and later, full Prolog-style unification) in Lisp is a very common exercise in beginner Lisp textbooks, going back decades.
  - lmm 8y ago
    I'd say it's less about Lisp and more that the ML lineage is finally getting its day in the sun (and not before time).

faitswulff 8y ago

IIRC, a big blocker to adopting ReasonML for a lot of people is its current lack of async / await support: https://github.com/facebook/reason/issues/1321 https://github.com/facebook/reason/issues/1321