Switching the meanings of the : and :: (was Haskell-prime Digest, Vol 104, Issue 2)

[Erik de Castro Lopo]

Soham Chowdhury wrote:

> Apologies if this question's already been discussed here, but have there
> been any discussions about switching the meanings of the : and ::
> operators? The rationale here is, of course, that :: is (probably, beware
> of anecdata) used a lot more than : is.
> 
> Obviously this would have the effect of breaking essentially every module
> ever written if it were done "automatically", but could there not be
> something akin to what -XDataKinds did for the * kind?

Sorry, from a cost/benefit analysis point of view this doesn't look
very promising at all.

The costs are very obvious:

* Implementation in GHC and ongoing maintenance.
* The extra cognitive load put on every developer who has to work on
  code that has both forms.

There are probably others, but as far as I am concerned the second
alone far outweights any potential benefit.

Erik
-- 
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Erik de Castro Lopo
http://www.mega-nerd.com/