00:30 <Mister_Magister> holy shit ocaml is so cursed

00:30 <Mister_Magister> i love it

00:31 <discocaml> <._null._> How so ?

00:40 <Mister_Magister> I'm just joking around but coming from c-ish languages some things are definitely alien, and some could say, cursed

00:41 <Mister_Magister> also can someone tell me why the ;; as i didn't get that far in tutorial yet

00:58 <discocaml> <._null._> ;; is only really used as a toplevel termination token

00:58 <discocaml> <._null._> termination is not the right word, but it ends the input

00:59 <Mister_Magister> ah okay thankies

01:40 <Mister_Magister> i'm starting to like it so much fun and :>

01:43 <Mister_Magister> jokes aside its pretty based

03:17 <discocaml> <darrenldl> @beajeanm that seems to be the common pattern : v

07:50 <discocaml> <JM> On the contrary, I would argue it's the most correct usage, don't impose on your user some niche concepts they don't care about 🙂

15:43 <masterbuilder> Mister_Magister: what things do you think are cursed? genuinely curious

18:11 <discocaml> <mbacarella> it's the only language I've ever used that feels like it was done by people who were good at programming language design and a lot of tradeoffs are intentional aesthetic choices. a lot of other PLs feel like people fumbling around blindly, not really aware of the full ramifications of decisions they're making

18:11 <discocaml> <mbacarella> except for the object system lol

19:50 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> What are some languages you've used that you feel are exceptionally poorly designed @pilothole

19:52 <discocaml> <mbacarella> all of them? 😅

19:52 <discocaml> <mbacarella> javascript and python

19:53 <discocaml> <mbacarella> the ones i'm forced to use because they're industry standards but would never pick otherwise

19:55 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> I don't mind JS from an ergonomics perspective really, it's the fact that it's not a fully-implemented PL

19:55 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> Python on the other hand is just gross and terrible to use

19:57 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> At least there's a reason that OCaml's stdlib is minimal, JS makes you use an external library for everything bc sloppy corporate race to the finish mentality

21:32 <dh`> idk, javascript is a lot more prone to semantic excursions than python

21:38 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> What do you mean by semantic excursions?

21:53 <dh`> it's a polite word for "insane behavior"

22:44 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> Oh yes that's probably true on the whole. Lol I thought it was some fancy PL theory term I had never encountered

22:45 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> Python is just a completely clumsy and inexpressive language imo

22:45 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> A real disgrace to good whitespace languages like OCaml

22:55 <discocaml> <contificate> I don't understand how anyone can prefer JS to Python

22:56 <discocaml> <contificate> JS is just like fundamentally unsuited for computer programming, can't even easily specify a custom key type for a hash table (it all devolves to strings) - at least with Python you have `__hash__` etc. and dataclasses and `match` which is a fairly adequate emulation of ML-like pattern matching

22:57 <discocaml> <contificate> the most shocking part is that TypeScript doesn't even begin to address the problems with JS, just gives people a gradually typed discipline for doing basic DOM manipulations - great stuff

23:03 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> I prefer neither and have the great good fortune to not be subjected to them at work. Your criticism of TS is true tho, it doesn't actually fix the fact that JS is an incomplete language, just adds a bolted-on type system

23:04 <discocaml> <contificate> I used to dislike Python but now I find it a very versatile tool for "one off" programs

23:13 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> Anecdotally tho I don't see Python's nicer features much used tho. Every library I encounter is chock full of MyPy annotations and then people are still writing `if foo is not None: print(foo)`

23:16 <discocaml> <contificate> yeah I mean you need to approach it with the heavens in your head already, right

23:16 <discocaml> <contificate> same way you can hire for C positions by getting OCamlers who are guaranteed to do a tagged union ridden greenspun's 10th law job of it 💯

23:16 <discocaml> <contificate> excellent

23:20 <discocaml> <yawaramin> i just implemented a design for parsing query parameters in Go, based on one i did in OCaml. it dramatically simplified the code. ama

23:27 <discocaml> <leviroth> OCaml is not a whitespace language though?

23:29 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> What do you call those blank areas of identation

23:29 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> What do you call those blank areas of indentation

23:29 <discocaml> <leviroth> Whitespace

23:31 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> I confess I don't understand your point

23:36 <discocaml> <yawaramin> OCaml is not whitespace-sensitive*

23:36 <discocaml> <yawaramin>

23:36 <discocaml> <yawaramin> *Minor exceptions apply

23:39 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> Good to know, I was merely referring in my perpetual ignorance to the aesthetic quality of much code I have seen in the wild and also written myself

23:40 <discocaml> <leviroth> Well, most languages will conventionally be written with indentation etc. to make them more readable for humans

23:41 <discocaml> <astreamingcomesacrossthesky> Yeah that's true, I just tend to group languages (that I have used) into three broad categories: brackets, whitespace, and Lisp