[Haskell-cafe] Let's teach GHC idiom brackets!

[Henrik Nilsson]

Edward Kmett wrote:

 > My experience with them is pretty close to Tikhon's here, so I'm
 > pretty much neutral on whether we go ahead and do this. Idiom
 > brackets seem to have some strident supporters, I just have never
 > personally had a case where I worked through what the idiom bracket
 > version was and found the result appreciably clearer. When you need
 > to mix in joins and regular application it gets quite messy.

I agree. I've written quite a lot of applicative code (very) long before
it was even called applicative, and I never found it particularly
burdensome to be explicit. On the other hand, I'd say being able
to easily mix regular application and join is essential.

 > Do we still need idiom brackets if we have ApplicativeDo?

Wasn't aware of this proposal, but I must say it does look rather
verbose compared to the explicit version, so nothing gained in that
sense, and, more importantly, it obscures the key point of applicative:
that arguments *cannot* depend on each other.

So from that perspective, if yet more special syntax must be introduced,
idiom brackets would seem preferable. But personally, I'd rather there
was no more special syntax unless it truly makes a difference, like
for monads and (even more so) arrows.

Best,

/Henrik

-- 
Henrik Nilsson
School of Computer Science
The University of Nottingham
nhn at cs.nott.ac.uk




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