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Comment by siwatanejo | Hacker News Reader

IMO OCaml is mind-bending (e.g. go figure out the 'in' keyword, I still don't understand it), F# is much easier/simpler.

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`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

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

Ocaml is just an ML in the traditional sense. It keep scope without curlies. There is really not much else to it.

The 'in' keyword is purely syntax, like semicolons/newlines or braces in your language of choice.

Yeah and it's fucking ugly and unreadable, it shouldn't be allowed.

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”.

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