If go ever showed people the awesomeness of StandardML or Ocaml/ReasonML (and their amazing type systems), I think the language would lose a lot of users.
A super awesome type system is worthless without the basic requirements for scalable software development.
Ocaml is billed as the pragmatic ML, but the syntax really sucks and nominally typed structs aren't nearly as good. They also have 3 competing standard libraries.
Haskell is too ivory tower. Most devs simply can't be bothered.
StandardML is that awesome middle. The language choices are pragmatic compared to haskell (mutable refs, side effects, and not lazy). The syntax is super simple and consistent (unlike ocaml). The concurrent ML extensions offer good multi-threading (still waiting on ocaml). The mlton compiler is very fast. There's only one standard library and it's decent. The big thing holding the language back is third-party libraries. If Google threw their millions at SML instead of go, SML really would be better in every way.
OCaml structs are structurally typed.
> They also have 3 competing standard libraries.
There is only one standard library, stdlib.
He is talking about SML here.
Care to elaborate, what Go has to do with Core or Batteries? Both are mostly container libraries, and you don't need them since most of the useful staff is in stdlib.
Check revdeps in OCaml, nobody uses batteries, and nearly nobody safe JS uses Core.
XML parsers, Lwt, servers are in separate packages, which is the only and right thing to do.
>then for async do you choose Async or Lwt
Lwt, it's a non-question. Async is for JaneStreet only.
> And as said the build system (when you're used to Go) is poor.
Dune [1] is far superior to Go's build system. Extremely fast, composable, supporting packaging and os-dependent configurations, extremely easy to config. No abomination like "import github.com/package" or "//go:" in your code.
Go build system doesn't have even a fraction of nice features dune have. For example I could `dune utop ./path/to/my/libs` to build my libs and run a nice repl to test them.
Go doesn't even let you to configure your warnings precisely.
You can read about Ocaml's nominal record typing in the [ReasonML docs](https://reasonml.github.io/docs/en/record) (it's more clear there IMO).
SML gets this right in my opinion. If I create a record `{foo = "abc", bar = 123}`, I can pass that record on to ANY function that needs a record that looks like {foo:string, bar:int} fields because it looks at the structure rather than the type of the record constructor.
Another nice property of the SML approach is that you don't need named arguments. Instead, pass a tuple with names (aka a record). One set of syntax rules covers both cases. I also rather like the ability to access record fields with the hash syntax (eg, `#foo myrecord`) when I don't want to destructure.
You are confusing records with structures, it seems. Structures exist in module language. Records are nominal in SML as well. Access functions for tuples and records are a dirty ugly hack build-in for convenience, they have nothing to do with structural typing, they are inferred in place.
OCaml has structural typed records, they are called objects.
let obj = object method pi = 3.14; method name = "Pi" end
val obj : < pi : float ; name : string >
> I can pass that record on to ANY function
No, you can't.
#foo { foo = 42 }
fun f x = #foo x
Compare it to OCaml, which have proper structural typing for objects and raw polymorphism
let f x = x#foo
f : < foo : 'a; .. > -> 'a
Anyways OCaml have structural typed records and raw polymorphism and subtyping support for them.
> Another nice property of the SML approach is that you don't need named arguments. Instead, pass a tuple with names (aka a record).
What's your point? You can use records as arguments in OCaml as well.
F# seems to meet all of that except that native static compilation isn't the default (but is available).
Define sane syntax. C-like abomination? At least unlike C it's unambiguous.
Sure, I'm asking for actual traits, which makes something easily or hardly parsed. The only languages that I find more readable than OCaml are Ada, Pascal and SML. What causes mental overhead in OCaml/SML syntax for you?
Do you find
func test (f func(a int, b int) int, x int) int
val test : (int -> int -> int) -> int
1. Familiarity. Like (presumably) most programmers, I'm familiar with languages in the C syntax family. Of course you can protest that this is a subjective criteria, but little good that will do you as you try to convince your colleagues to adopt (what they perceive to be) your pointlessly cryptic language for the next project.
2. Visual structure is important and while OCaml's minimalism makes for elegant parser algorithms, it works against human psychology (or so I strongly suspect).
Look, I want to like OCaml/SML. I think the type system is a step in the right direction, but the type system is just gravy and the practical concerns--the fundamentals--are neglected (as much as you may protest to the contrary).
Could you show an example?
> it works against human psychology
What minimalism are you talking about? It uses nearly the same notations as mathematicians used for decades. Most of the constructs are very like to those in Python.