>From my understanding the biggest argument against this is the change in
template-haskell?

Not specifically.  My reservation is that
That's not a combination I like.  Pain now for possible (but uncertain) gain in the future.

I don't object to making types and terms behave similarly -- indeed I have invested lots of time working with Richard, Vlad, Andrei and others on proposals and MRs that move in this direction.  I'm just very unconvinced about this proposal. 

One minor point.  In patterns we allow this:
f ((,) @Int @[a] x y) = ...
Here the type arguments are not type variables but full-blown types, and of course nested parens etc come "for free".  But this proposal concerns data type declarations in which we definitely don't want fulll-blown types. So it's more than a "terms and types should be the same" discussion.

Simon



On Fri, 22 Mar 2024 at 14:47, Malte Ott <malte.ott@maralorn.de> wrote:
From my understanding the biggest argument against this is the change in
template-haskell?
I am wondering how many users will actually be affected by that.
TypeAbstractions are quite recent so I wouldn’t be surprised if not much
template-haskell code is using the corresponding constructors.
That might also be an argument to do this change now before the ecosystem has
more time to settle on this.

Simon, I am also curious. Why are you not convinced by the goal to make types
and terms as similar as possible?

Best
Malte

On 2024-03-22 14:23, Arnaud Spiwack wrote:
> I'm happy to follow you on this. Especially since in the future that Vlad
> hopes, where there'd be less difference between terms and types, this
> particular feature may fall naturally, so it may be worth revisiting then
> rather than paying the cost now.
>
> On Fri, 22 Mar 2024 at 09:53, Simon Peyton Jones <
> simon.peytonjones@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Do you worry about the implementation because of future maintenance costs?
> >> Or because of the immediate cost of developing the feature?
> >
> >
> > Mostly the former.  It's just a bit more un-forced complexity.
> >
> > As far as I can see, there aren't other objections to this design besides
> >> the cost, right? There's no real possibility of an alternate, conflicting
> >> design for data type arguments, is there?
> >>
> >
> > It's just Occam's razor.   No one is asking for this.  And I'm unconvinced
> > by "future proofiing" because it's hard to correctly anticipate the future.
> >
> > Simon
> >
> > On Fri, 22 Mar 2024 at 08:13, Arnaud Spiwack <arnaud.spiwack@tweag.io>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> Simon,
> >>
> >> Do you worry about the implementation because of future maintenance
> >> costs? Or because of the immediate cost of developing the feature?
> >>
> >> As far as I can see, there aren't other objections to this design besides
> >> the cost, right? There's no real possibility of an alternate, conflicting
> >> design for data type arguments, is there?
> >>
> >> On Thu, 21 Mar 2024 at 10:57, Simon Peyton Jones <
> >> simon.peytonjones@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>
> >>> Dear Steering Committee
> >>>
> >>> Vlad proposes to amend proposal #425
> >>> <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0425-decl-invis-binders.rst>to
> >>> permit more wildcard binder forms in type declarations:
> >>>   https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/641
> >>>
> >>> You may find it easiest to look at the rich diff
> >>> <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/641/files?short_path=cb2a762#diff-cb2a762676d938436a07317bbd007570b5efdfa00b40763b897ee920694bcbb5>
> >>> .
> >>>
> >>> This is a pretty small generalisation which would allow
> >>>
> >>> data T (( (a :: k1) :: k2)) = ...
> >>>
> >>> in which the binder has multiple kind signatures and redundant parens.
> >>> The change is *not driven by user need*, but rather solely by
> >>> *uniformity*: these same forms are permitted in function definitions:
> >>>
> >>> f :: forall (a :: k). blah
> >>> f @(((a::k1)::k2))) = ...
> >>>
> >>> is permitted.
> >>>
> >>> It imposes a change on Template Haskell syntax too.
> >>>
> >>> The implementation becomes a bit more complicated; more recursive data
> >>> types, etc.  Nothing hard, but more.
> >>>
> >>> It's not a big deal either way.  Very few people expressed a view on
> >>> GitHub.  My personal view is that the modest (albeit non-zero) gain does
> >>> not justify the definite (albeit modest) pain. I would leave this until
> >>> someone actually wants it.
> >>>
> >>> Vlad argues for future-proofing, but my experience is that an eye to the
> >>> future is sensible when you are making changes anyway; but making unforced
> >>> changes solely for the future risks incurring pain now that, when the
> >>> future comes, turns out to have been a poor investment.  We may have
> >>> correctly anticipated, or we may not.
> >>>
> >>> So my recommendation is to park this until we get a real user demand.
> >>>
> >>> It's a perfectly sensible proposal, but adopting it is a judgement call.
> >>> I'll leave a week for committee responses, and then we can just vote.
> >>>
> >>> Simon
> >>>
> >>> On Thu, 21 Mar 2024 at 08:07, Adam Gundry <adam@well-typed.com> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> Dear Committee,
> >>>>
> >>>> Vlad proposes to amend proposal #425 to permit more wildcard binder
> >>>> forms in type declarations:
> >>>>
> >>>> https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/641
> >>>>
> >>>> I'd like to nominate Simon PJ as the shepherd.
> >>>>
> >>>> Please guide us to a conclusion as outlined in
> >>>> https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals#committee-process
> >>>>
> >>>> Cheers,
> >>>>
> >>>> Adam
> >>>>
> >>>>
> >>>> --
> >>>> Adam Gundry, Haskell Consultant
> >>>> Well-Typed LLP, https://www.well-typed.com/
> >>>>
> >>>> Registered in England & Wales, OC335890
> >>>> 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX, England
> >>>> _______________________________________________
> >>>> ghc-steering-committee mailing list
> >>>> ghc-steering-committee@haskell.org
> >>>> https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-steering-committee
> >>>>
> >>> _______________________________________________
> >>> ghc-steering-committee mailing list
> >>> ghc-steering-committee@haskell.org
> >>> https://mail.haskell.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/ghc-steering-committee
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> --
> >> Arnaud Spiwack
> >> Director, Research at https://moduscreate.com and https://tweag.io.
> >>
> >
>
> --
> Arnaud Spiwack
> Director, Research at https://moduscreate.com and https://tweag.io.

> _______________________________________________
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