This is a bit silly but when i look at new languages coming up I always look at ...

mrkeen · 2025-12-22T11:05:33 1766401533

Weird, that's exactly how I feel reading Go:

  func (lst *List[T]) Push(v T) {
    if lst.tail == nil {
        lst.head = &element[T]{val: v}
        lst.tail = lst.head
    } else {
        lst.tail.next = &element[T]{val: v}
        lst.tail = lst.tail.next
    }

}

And this one doesn't even have the infamous error-checking.

hu3 · 2025-12-23T00:06:40 1766448400

You cherry picked a contrived example but that's one of the cleanest generics implementations.

Now imagine if it had semicolons, ->, ! and '.

mrkeen · 2025-12-23T08:59:19 1766480359

> You cherry picked a contrived example

List.add is contrived? What are you doing that's simpler the list.add?

> but that's one of the cleanest generics implementations.

You're saying it's typically worse than this?

gethly · 2025-12-23T10:46:20 1766486780

He is referring to

  &element[T]{val: v}

the & is a pointer, which is common across most languages, but the [T] is a dynamic type T. Otherwise it would be just

  &element{val: v}

He says that element[T] is a clean/simple implementation of generics.

steveklabnik · 2025-12-22T11:50:21 1766404221

I respect your preferences! I like punctuation.

Even though I have a Perl tattoo, it'll never get like that, though.

(Semicolon rules, for now at least, will be the same as Rust)

imbnwa · 2025-12-22T08:49:46 1766393386

What would be better?

gethly · 2025-12-22T11:22:42 1766402562

Remove all of that noise.

Take this:

  fn fib(n: i32) -> i32 {}

The (n: i32) can be just (n i32), because there is no benefit to adding the colon there.

The -> i32 can also be just i32 because, again, the -> serves no purpose in function/method definition syntax.

So you end up with simple and clean fn fib(n i32) i32 {}

And semicolons are an ancient relic that has been passed on to new languages for 80 fucking years without any good reason. We have modern lexers/tokenizers and compilers that can handle if you don't put a stupid ; at the end of every single effing line.

Just go and count how many of these useless characters are in your codebase and imagine how many keystrokes, compilation errors and wasted time it cost you, whilst providing zero value in return.

exceptione · 2025-12-22T12:04:10 1766405050

In a Hindley-Milner (or deriative) type system, types doesn't have to be explicit, making the number of arguments ambiguous here:

  fn fib(n i32) i32 {}

But even if they need to be written explicitly, type applications like `List a` would require syntax to disambiguate them.

Personally, I would like a language that pushes the programmer to write the types as part of a doc comment.

Also think about returning lambda's. Should it look like this?

  fn foo(n i32) (i32 i32) {}

Of course the IDE could help by showing the typographic arrows and other delineations, but as plaintext this is completely unreadable.

  > And semicolons are an ancient relic that has been passed on to new languages for 80 fucking years without any good reason.

You still have to think about stuff like currying. You either delimit the line, or you use significant white space.

gethly · 2025-12-22T13:26:09 1766409969

> Also think about returning lambda's. Should it look like this? > > fn foo(n i32) (i32 i32) {}

It should be

  fn foo(n i32, m i32) (i32, i32) {}

It will also allow future implementation of named returns, like in Go:

  fn foo(n i32) (a i32, b i32) {}

As for semicolon, that is needed only if you have inline expression:

  for (;;;) {}

Or inline block, like in Go:

  if foo := a + b; foo > c {}

exceptione · 2025-12-22T14:16:37 1766412997

  > fn foo(n i32, m i32) (i32, i32) {}

But now consider returning a function with type¹

  Foo<T<string, T2>> -> (bool -> IDictionary<string, T3> -> i32 -> T3) where T2 : T3

even if you leave out the latter type constraint, I think it is hard to avoid undecidable ambiguity.

  fn foo(n i32, m T2) (????) {}

You quickly get ambiguity due to type parameters / generics, functions as arguments, and tuples if you don't syntactically separate them.

Even if you your context-depended parser can recognize it, does the user? I agree that a language designer should minimize the amount of muscle damage, but he shouldn't forget that readability is perhaps even more critical.

____

1. Note, even if the parser can recognize this, for humans the '>' is confusing unless syntax highlighting takes care of it. One time it delimits a generic type argument, the other time it is part of '->'. This is also an argument for rendering these things as ligatures.

gethly · 2025-12-22T14:38:29 1766414309

This is pointless discussion as Go has all of these things already implemented, so there is no point in going backwards.

exceptione · 2025-12-22T18:48:53 1766429333

The point is that a (new) syntax for any language needs to support any such implementation. The language implementation itself is not the point.

gethly · 2025-12-23T07:35:23 1766475323

Yes, and I am saying Go has already solved all of this and it makes little sense to deviate too much from its syntax.

Joker_vD · 2025-12-22T14:55:48 1766415348

> The (n: i32) can be just (n i32), because there is no benefit to adding the colon there.

> The -> i32 can also be just i32 because, again, the -> serves no purpose in function/method definition syntax.

Well, there is, but it's more of a personal trait than a universal truth. Some human programmers (e.g. me) tend to read and parse (and even write, to some extent) source code more accurately when there is a sprinkle of punctuation thrown in into a long chain of nothing but identifiers and subtly nested parentheses. Some, e.g. you, don't need such assistance and find it annoying and frivolous.

Unfortunately, since we don't store the source code of our programs as binary AST blobs that could be rendered in a personalized matter, but as plain text instead, we have to accept the language designer's choices. Perhaps it actually has better consequences than the alternative; perhaps not.

gethly · 2025-12-22T18:57:25 1766429845

the only reason why one might hold such an opinion is the lack of syntax highlighting.

elygre · 2025-12-22T16:43:23 1766421803

What’s with all the periods, one at the end of each paragraph? Fully wasted.

christophilus · 2025-12-22T09:05:44 1766394344

I wish more languages would adopt Clojure’s approach to optional delimiters in collections.

[2 45 78]

It’s just a nicer thing to view and type in my experience.

Regarding syntax soup, I think Odin is probably syntactically the cleanest of the lower level languages I’ve played with.

gethly · 2025-12-22T11:43:38 1766403818

oh, yeah. that looks good. i always hated using ", " delimiter for lists and the amount of typos it always takes to make clean(well, not with Go fmt).

Odin seems interesting but for me it has two deal-breakers: first one use the use of ^ for pointer de/reference. Not that it does not make sense, it's just that it is not an easy key to get to on my keyboard layout and i will not be changing that. The & and * are well known characters for this purpose and, at least for me, easily accessible on the keyboard. Second issue is the need to download many gigabytes of visual studio nonsense just so i am able to compile a program. Coming from Go, this is just a non-starter. Thirdly, and this is more about the type of work i do than the language, there are/were no db drivers, no http/s stack and other things i would need for my daily work. Other than that, Odin is interesting. Though I am not sure how I would fare without OOP after so many years with inheritance OOP and encapsulated OOP.

int_19h · 2025-12-22T09:25:19 1766395519

It's a Lisp thing, obviously, but also there's a benefit to explicit delimiters - it makes it possible to have an expression as an element without wrapping that in its own brackets, as S-exprs require.