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Comment by leshow | Hacker News Reader

I've been waiting for 0.18 in anticipation because I had heard we might get server rendering.

Instead a bunch of language and syntax that I enjoyed was removed from the language, but I get better bug reports? The export button is broken unless I click "resume" which I find pretty odd.

I have to say I'm really disappointed, every release they just remove language features.

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What has been removed is just syntactic sugar that can easily be acheived in other ways. I think it's a good thing that Elm's core is kept as clean and simple as possible. There are enough other languages with a kitchen sink philosophy.

Explain the 'other ways' I can name a function with a prime or use backticks now that the compiler won't allow it.

The migration guide [1] suggests that instead of primes you can use underscores. And instead of backticks you can use pipelining.

[1]: https://github.com/elm-lang/elm-platform/blob/11c8ecb81a58b8...

My mistake, I thought you were saying I could still have the syntax features I wanted in the language. I like the range syntax, and backticks, and calling functions'. I also liked signals and having access to more stuff that is now 'magic' in the Elm compiler.

It sounds like you might like PureScript [1] or GHCJS [2] more than Elm. Have you tried either of those?

[1]: http://www.purescript.org/ [2]: https://github.com/ghcjs/ghcjs

No, those don't really appeal to me. I think Elm had a great middle ground for a while pre-0.16 with Signals. I'm just disappointed at what I see as a lack of positive change for the language. The more stuff that becomes compiler magic the worse the language is going to get IMO.

> The more stuff that becomes compiler magic the worse the language is going to get IMO.

Not sure what you mean here. Elm 0.18 has less compiler magic, not more.

One such magic is the "comparable" thing. See http://reasonablypolymorphic.com/blog/elm-is-wrong and https://github.com/elm-lang/elm-compiler/issues/774

Yes, but that's not new in 0.18

Did you read my comment? I mentioned the removal of Signals and it's replacement with the 'magic' Html.app

Html.App used to be a namespace, I suspect you mean Program? In any case, how is that any more, or less, magic than Signals? Considering that the compiler has removed syntax in later versions, later versions of Elm has less magic than earlier versions.

Personally I do not like underscores. It can get real ugly.

So instead of:

    map3 f ( x, cmd ) ( y, cmd' ) ( z, cmd'' ) =

I will have to write:

    map3 f ( x, cmd ) ( y, cmd_ ) ( z, cmd__ ) =

https://github.com/Fresheyeball/elm-return/pull/4/files#diff...

And it affects package API too: https://github.com/elm-lang/svg/commit/40b761d66b48fcc28f5b5...

However that's just a matter of taste and does not deter me from continuing to use Elm.

Use numbers instead of backticks or underscores. There's a reason we got rid of roman numerals.

The "other way" is to use x_1, x_2, or to just use better variable names.

Haskellers are bad at coming up with informative variable names (and I say this as a Haskeller).

I was sad to see record fields not being addable anymore. It made for a good typeclass replacement, with no extra baggage.

That's been gone for a while.

Perhaps it's a cleanup-run before adding new stuff. Removing need for arcane syntax seems like it could simplify the compilation pipeline.

The syntax was hardly 'arcane', and I doubt it was necessary to remove these features for the purpose of streamlining the compiler, that sounds a bit ridiculous. In fact you could argue that throwing an error on functions' is actually doing more work. That really is a style thing and something best left to a linter or the like.

Evan hasn't mentioned anywhere that he's been removing features for the last year or so just to give us some big features later. If he has said that I would love to see it.

Removing them wasn't necessary, but it's better. Elm isn't 1.0 yet, so "does this make the language better" is the metric for feature addition or deletion.

"better" is so arbitrary that I'm afraid it's pretty much "what does Evan-san want"

Every other comment about these changes has expressed approval. An overwhelming majority of Elm community members I've heard discuss this feel the same way.

You are welcome to a dissenting opinion, of course, but throwing shade at Evan for his popular design decisions seems unlikely to change anyone's mind.

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