Reduce amount of infix operators

[benstigsen]

I understand the explicitness of having <>, + and +., but it seems absolutely silly to me, that when the types are strict, known at compile-time and the LSP can show errors before even building the project, that there's a need for these different operators... why not this:

2 + 3      // 5
2.0 + 3.0  // 5.0
2 + 3.0    // error!
"hello " + "world" // "hello world"

Reducing the amount of operators would reduce how explicit the language is, yes. But it wouldn't interfere with type-safety at all, it would reduce the syntactic ruleset and keep the language more in line, with many other languages, reducing the learning curve.

[GearsDatapacks]

What would be the type of this function in the new system?

pub fn add(a, b) {
  a + b
}

[benstigsen]

Wouldn't it still be possible to catch that at compile-time? Isn't it already?

add(2, 3)
add(2.0, 3) // error!

[lpil]

What would the type of the function be?

Currently there is no overloading of operators in Gleam, so the type is obvious. Your proposal for overloaded operators has to include new rules for the type system to handle the possibility of overloading.

If this aspect can be answered satisfactorily then we can consider the proposal can be considered for inclusion in the language.

[benstigsen]

Ah right, that is fair. I had not considered this.