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Im so happy seeing this. We are approaching „great language” level and for me this is the first one. I would be thankful for pointing at any other language tha

Im so happy seeing this. We are approaching „great language” level and for me this is the first one. I would be thankful for pointing at any other language that reliably and safely adds great features and is already convenient to use. I jumped from mastering Go to learning advanced C#, because Go stopped with adding great things :(

mega_dean 4mo ago
I don’t know if it satisfies “already convenient to use”, but IMO ocaml fits “adds great features reliably and safely”. They merged their multicore compiler ~4 years ago, which was a pretty huge change that added parallelism through domains. Notably, they had a working version ~10 years ago, but refused to merge it until they sorted out some performance issues that would have affected existing single-threaded code. I only say it’s not “already convenient to use” because I heard tons of complaints about the dev environment - mostly that there’s no debugger, no official package manager, etc. But they are working on ‘dune’, and just like the language itself, I got the impression that the dune developers were being conscious to “add great features reliably and safely”. So overall I thought it was a great language/ecosystem, ymmv though.
- siwatanejo 4mo ago
  IMO OCaml is mind-bending (e.g. go figure out the 'in' keyword, I still don't understand it), F# is much easier/simpler.
  - tuvix 4mo ago
    Never used OCaml but it seems like a way to chain together expressions using the same variable name? Seems odd but I could see myself using it
  - debugnik 4mo ago
    The 'in' keyword is purely syntax, like semicolons/newlines or braces in your language of choice.
    - siwatanejo 4mo ago
      Yeah and it's fucking ugly and unreadable, it shouldn't be allowed.
      - mega_dean 4mo ago
        That was my reaction at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly. Some of the other bizarre syntax bothered me for much longer, like using semicolons for list separators, eg [1;2;3] instead of [1,2,3]. I briefly tried to use Reason since it “fixed” a lot of my biggest issues with the syntax, but it wasn’t worth it overall so I went back to plain ocaml pretty quickly. I didn’t look very closely at F# at the time, but I remember thinking it looked like “ocaml with more normal syntax”.
  - spider-mario 4mo ago
    `let <var> = <expr> in <expr>` is an expression. Top-level bindings are just `let <var> = <expr>`. That’s pretty much all there is to it. let fac = let rec fac' acc = function | 0 -> acc | n -> fac' (n * acc) (n - 1) in fac' 1 let seven = let four = 4 and three = 3 in four + three https://ideone.com/HpTrI4 https://ideone.com/HpTrI4
  - shikck200 4mo ago
    Ocaml is just an ML in the traditional sense. It keep scope without curlies. There is really not much else to it.
sethammons 4mo ago
I am a fan of Go, and have been interested in c#; would be interested in hearing about your experience
flexagoon 4mo ago
If I understand correctly that you think Elixir is not yet "convenient to use", I suggest you still give it a shot if you haven't. I'm generally a huge hater of dynamically typed languages, and I still love using Elixir.

mega_dean 4mo ago

I don’t know if it satisfies “already convenient to use”, but IMO ocaml fits “adds great features reliably and safely”. They merged their multicore compiler ~4 years ago, which was a pretty huge change that added parallelism through domains. Notably, they had a working version ~10 years ago, but refused to merge it until they sorted out some performance issues that would have affected existing single-threaded code. I only say it’s not “already convenient to use” because I heard tons of complaints about the dev environment - mostly that there’s no debugger, no official package manager, etc. But they are working on ‘dune’, and just like the language itself, I got the impression that the dune developers were being conscious to “add great features reliably and safely”. So overall I thought it was a great language/ecosystem, ymmv though.

siwatanejo 4mo ago
IMO OCaml is mind-bending (e.g. go figure out the 'in' keyword, I still don't understand it), F# is much easier/simpler.
- tuvix 4mo ago
  Never used OCaml but it seems like a way to chain together expressions using the same variable name? Seems odd but I could see myself using it
- debugnik 4mo ago
  The 'in' keyword is purely syntax, like semicolons/newlines or braces in your language of choice.
  - siwatanejo 4mo ago
    Yeah and it's fucking ugly and unreadable, it shouldn't be allowed.
    - mega_dean 4mo ago
      That was my reaction at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly. Some of the other bizarre syntax bothered me for much longer, like using semicolons for list separators, eg [1;2;3] instead of [1,2,3]. I briefly tried to use Reason since it “fixed” a lot of my biggest issues with the syntax, but it wasn’t worth it overall so I went back to plain ocaml pretty quickly. I didn’t look very closely at F# at the time, but I remember thinking it looked like “ocaml with more normal syntax”.
- spider-mario 4mo ago
  `let <var> = <expr> in <expr>` is an expression. Top-level bindings are just `let <var> = <expr>`. That’s pretty much all there is to it. let fac = let rec fac' acc = function | 0 -> acc | n -> fac' (n * acc) (n - 1) in fac' 1 let seven = let four = 4 and three = 3 in four + three https://ideone.com/HpTrI4 https://ideone.com/HpTrI4
- shikck200 4mo ago
  Ocaml is just an ML in the traditional sense. It keep scope without curlies. There is really not much else to it.

sethammons 4mo ago

I am a fan of Go, and have been interested in c#; would be interested in hearing about your experience

flexagoon 4mo ago

If I understand correctly that you think Elixir is not yet "convenient to use", I suggest you still give it a shot if you haven't. I'm generally a huge hater of dynamically typed languages, and I still love using Elixir.