[kinkdr]

I wish they would stop making changes just for the shake of change. E.g. Up until 0.17 most code examples where using the prime ' character.

With 0.18, Evan decided that using prime is bad taste, so he decided to break any code that uses it.

Sure, it is not a big change, but it means they are not respecting user's time and it is a sign of things to come.

Sorry for the rant.

Edit: I hope my reply doesn't get misunderstood. I love Elm and use it in all my side projects. I think it made wonders for introducing new people to the ML world.

Edit2: Sorry, didn't meant to make so much fuss about it. It is indeed a small thing.

[vimota]

Just a reminder that 'elm-upgrade' [0] should handle this automatically.

[0] https://github.com/avh4/elm-upgrade#elm-upgrade

[listrophy]

I agree... I wish we still had the prime character. But since Elm isn't at 1.x status yet, that earns me an "irritated smirk" rather than a table-flip. :)

[kinkdr]

Yes, I am not saying it is a big thing. It's a small thing in itself, but breaking backwards compatibility for no good reason is huge red flag for the future.

[thatswrong0]

> breaking backwards compatibility for no good reason

I'd say reducing weird syntax is a perfectly good reason. How is doing this while offering an easy migration solution in an early stage language a "huge red flag"?

[conistonwater]

A prime as an identifier constituent is not "weird syntax". The ancient C tradition of only allowing [_[:alnum:]] characters in identifiers is pretty pointless anyway. I really wish more languages would allow question marks and exclamation marks (and everything else), the way Lisp and Scheme do (e.g., https://docs.racket-lang.org/guide/syntax-overview.html#%28p...)

There's a very good example in C++ of how this causes problems, where vector::clear and vector::empty are much too easy to confuse (which one of them deletes all elements, and which one of them checks if a vector is empty?). Replacing them with clear! and empty? (or is it clear? and empty!) would be a huge improvement. Whenever a language moves away from arbitrary legacy restrictions, that's a good thing.

[kbp]

The problem is that prime (as it's used, anyway) doesn't carry any meaning the way ? and ! (as they are used) do in Scheme, it's just used for "I couldn't bother to think of another name". Enabling clearer names is great, but the language allowing primes in names was accomplishing the opposite of that.

[conistonwater]

I think that's a coding style decision, and shouldn't be part of language specification. I certainly don't feel about primes the way you do: having a function f and a function f' usually means they are sort of similar with some specific difference between them, definitely not "couldn't think of a better name". E.g., in haskell a prime often denotes a strict function, it's a better convention than having f and f_strict. Plus, how are you going to decide which unicode symbols should not be allowed? It can get a little random.

[masklinn]

In Haskell it's sometimes (often?) used for strict versions of functions e.g. foldl and foldl'.

[manu3000]

it's a convention in ML languages, for a name whose value has been modified

[kinkdr]

> early stage language

I keep hearing this excuse, and to be honest I don't like it. On one hand we want to expand the usage of Elm, and have Elm be taken seriously, on the other hand when we feel like we use the "early stage" language excuse.

> I'd say reducing weird syntax is a perfectly good reason

I disagree with you on this, prohibiting the users from using the prime character has nothing to do with the language's syntax.

[thatswrong0]

> On one hand we want to expand the usage of Elm, and have Elm be taken seriously, on the other hand when we feel like we use the "early stage" language excuse.

If I didn't know what changes we're referring to, it would sound like there was some critical change to the core functionality of the language.

Instead, they're removing one weird bit of syntax. It's not an excuse that it's an early stage language - it's acknowledging reality. And an upside to that reality is that making these types of changes won't upset nearly as many people as it would if it were a more mature language.

> I disagree with you on this, for me it is very worrying.

You're not explaining why. Here (https://github.com/elm-lang/elm-plans/issues/4) are three good arguments for removing it:

1. It confuses newbies.

2. It's an easy character to miss.

3. It's easy to migrate away from it.

What are your arguments for keeping it besides the fact it's already there?

[kinkdr]

> it would sound like there was some critical change to the core functionality of the language

No, I acknowledged early on, and many times, that it is a very minor thing. My only concern is that it is worrying for the future. (Using the word huge in the "huge red flag" was an exaggeration. I shouldn't have done so).

> 1. It confuses newbies.

Remove it from core language then. Having the prime character in my code, doesn't confuse anyone but me.

Is a language that allows Unicode characters for variable names confusing for newbies?

> 2. It's an easy character to miss.

Again, it is in my code.

> 3. It's easy to migrate away from it.

That's not an argument for removing something.

Again, my point is that is has to do with personal taste, yet Evan decided to force it to anybody who uses the language.

He could have very easily enforce it to core packages, and nobody would complain. But forcing it on my code, is worrying.

[dismantlethesun]

Before you reach a 1.0, you should be able to break backward compatibility for any and no reason.

Most likely the reason is that you want to make something that you yourself are proud of or at least satisfied with.

Unless you're being paid for the project, satisfying your psychological goals should be the prime point of pre-version 1.0 software.

[eastWestMath]

It's not at 1.0, there's no promise about preserving backwards compatibility at this point.

[kinkdr]

See my reply to the other thread.

1. If it is not ready for prime time, maybe we should stop promoting it?

2. React was 0.14 up to a year or so ago. The number doesn't mean anything.

[matt4077]

> prime time

Apparently, prime time came and went :)

> If it is not ready for prime time, maybe we should stop promoting it?

It's about as ready as the impression it makes: yes, you can use it for project. But you may need half an hour every few months to update.

[kinkdr]

> Apparently, prime time came and went :)

:D. Pun was not intended!

[eastWestMath]

People are excited by it, and managed to deal with prime-ageddon without any major headaches (it's like basic regex search and there's even an update tool, come on).

[Latty]

I actually think that's a terrible idea. `0.x`v versions are precisely the time to try and get this stuff in, before you end up locked into it forever.