[m-dev.] op/3, again.

[Ralph Becket]

Hi Doug,

doug.auclair at logicaltypes.com, Monday, 13 March 2006:
> A side note, this doubled the complexity of this build system, and
> blew away one of my work days.

Sorry to hear that, but that's likely to be the case with any unofficial
language extensions.

> Also, this build system is entirely
> redundant to mmc, given mmc processes op/3 declarations (which
> I have demonstrated in trivial to do).
> 
> As all applicative users of Mercury (Peter, Peter, Peter, Michael Day
> put up a post in 2002/3, myself and colleagues) have expressed a 
> desire for op/3 declarations, preferring it over `op` syntax, it'd be 
> nice to have that as a language feature ...

The problem wasn't difficulty of implementation (although things
actually would become complicated were op/3 declarations to affect
sub-modules and importing modules, which might or might not be the right
behaviour).  The problem is that we, the language designers, are not
convinced that it is a good idea.  While the people you list may be
competent Mercury programmers, we have also had much experience with
people who are not, and it is the code they will write that causes us
much concern.  Come to think of it, it's the code that everybody writes
that causes us concern...

-- Ralph
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