> I think you're talking about a different issue regarding names (maybe because the original post got taken down.)
I think he was just referring to lack of names in type declarations in OCaml.
type expr =
| Sum of (int, int)
| Negation of int
A sibling comment pointed out that this is now possible:
type expr =
| Sum of { left: expr ; right: expr }
| Negation of { child: expr }
It's difficult for me to work out the specifics here, but I think my point stands. In general, you just don't add nested ontologies the way you do in the OO world. There's a lot to be said about that with lenses, but there's strong incentive in both Haskell and Ocaml to use module-level separation and minimal accessors.
As for type constructors, I think this was one of Rich Hickey's complaints from his now infamous interview too, and yeah, in some cases it can be confusing. This is in the same sense that order-of-arguments for methods without required names (and tooling combinators like -> vs ->>) as well. Style problems exist with every syntax!
But from my perspective, it's pretty rare to not use record syntax or lenses AND be pattern matching on very deep groups of Things In Sum Types. The incentive to not do this is very high now.
My perspective is not so uncommon in the circles I run in; We Avoid Doing That Because It's Easier Not To Do It: the Musical. When folks point this out, it feels somewhat like arguing with a time traveler who hasn't really examined the state of the art and common techniques in 2017. It'd be like me demanding lambdas be added to Java or suggesting Javascript needs a better lexical scoping assignment primitive. It was a problem, but now we have new problems.
It's difficult for me to work out the specifics here, but I think my point stands. In general, you just don't add nested ontologies the way you do in the OO world. There's a lot to be said about that with lenses, but there's strong incentive in both Haskell and Ocaml to use module-level separation and minimal accessors.
As for type constructors, I think this was one of Rich Hickey's complaints from his now infamous interview too, and yeah, in some cases it can be confusing. This is in the same sense that order-of-arguments for methods without required names (and tooling combinators like -> vs ->>) as well. Style problems exist with every syntax!
But from my perspective, it's pretty rare to not use record syntax or lenses AND be pattern matching on very deep groups of Things In Sum Types. The incentive to not do this is very high now.
My perspective is not so uncommon in the circles I run in; We Avoid Doing That Because It's Easier Not To Do It: the Musical. When folks point this out, it feels somewhat like arguing with a time traveler who hasn't really examined the state of the art and common techniques in 2017. It'd be like me demanding lambdas be added to Java or suggesting Javascript needs a better lexical scoping assignment primitive. It was a problem, but now we have new problems.