In reference to the quoted, I will note that I have written a package <http://hackage.haskell.org/package/language-ats> for dealing with ATS syntax in Haskell. The pretty-printer works marvelously, but getting the parser right is HARD. The package already has around 1400 lines of code for the lexer/parser and it's STILL buggy. I suspect a good part of that is be due to me not understanding things correctly, but in general I think a simpler syntax would serve ATS much better. There are a lot of things I want to be able to do with Haskell/ATS and I suspect the wider community will appreciate it for exactly the reasons mentioned by others :)
On Tuesday, February 20, 2018 at 1:00:48 PM UTC-6, aditya siram wrote: > > Many here have mentioned syntax as a point of improvement. While I agree, > I have no opinions on which variant (ML vs. C vs. Lisp) is more > aesthetically appealing. Some things I look for are unambiguous > indentation, easy for a machine to format and easy to parse. I think syntax > should be designed to be amenable to making an IDE and other source code > tooling rather than trying to meet some subjective definition of > readability which is only really relevant in the small. As an example, > while pretty, the (whitespace significant) version of Haskell syntax is > difficult and demoralizing to write tooling for. > > I will also say that ATS is currently so little used that now's the time > to make pretty big changes, even slashing features ( eg. macros ). > > On Tuesday, February 20, 2018 at 9:19:31 AM UTC-6, Artyom Shalkhakov wrote: >> >> On Saturday, February 10, 2018 at 12:15:22 AM UTC+6, gmhwxi wrote: >>> >>> For the moment, I just want to open a thread for ATS3. >>> >>> I decided to pick ATS/Xanadu for the full project name. I like the name >>> Xanadu >>> because it is poetic and brings a feel of exoticness. >>> >>> >> ATS3 is supposed to be compiled to ATS2. At least at the beginning. I >>> will try to >>> write more about what I have in mind regarding ATS3. >>> >>> I know that a lot of people have been complaining about the syntax of >>> ATS2. So >>> we can start the effort of designing some "nice" syntax for ATS3. Please >>> feel free >>> to post here if you would like share your opinions and ideas. >>> >>> >> I will say what I would like to see: >> >> 1. IDE support (especially for the hard parts, i.e. the proofs!) >> 2. the syntax is very complex (maybe simplify?) >> 3. better support for flat types (e.g. flat unions, flat unboxed arrays >> on stack, etc.) >> 4. compilation to wasm >> 5. tools (especially for building, but also package management) >> 6. some kind of help for implementing various intricately-linked data >> structures (doubly-linked lists, doubly-linked trees, etc.) >> 7. improvements to templates (e.g. templates for indexed type variables, >> is that even possible?) >> >> To make ATS viable, we have to make its kind of typeful programming >> friendly. >> >> I will be happy to take the lead but we definitely need to have some form >>> of community >>> effort on this project given its size and scope. >>> >>> Cheers! >>> >>> --Hongwei >>> >>> PS: I felt rushed every time up to now when implementing ATS. This time >>> I am hoping >>> to have the luxury of thinking about implementation a bit before >>> actually doing it :) >>> >>> -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "ats-lang-users" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to ats-lang-users+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to ats-lang-users@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/ats-lang-users. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ats-lang-users/2746a848-f1a5-45fa-92c3-9d99ad44ee47%40googlegroups.com.