> Tying back to my original point, are the brackets, annotations, semicolons, and return really needed? From my perspective, the answer is no. These are the simplest functions you can have as well. The differences get multiplied over a large codebase.
The answer is no for this trivial function. As your code goes beyond this it gets harder for humans to parse and so the syntax becomes more necessary.
My earlier analogy is pretty perfect here actually. Do you really need spaces in "thank you"? No clearly not. Does that mean you shouldn't use spaces at all?
> Are people here really making the argument that F# and MLs don't have clean syntax?
No. You are literally replying to a comment where I agreed that it is "clean".
The answer is no for this trivial function. As your code goes beyond this it gets harder for humans to parse and so the syntax becomes more necessary.
My earlier analogy is pretty perfect here actually. Do you really need spaces in "thank you"? No clearly not. Does that mean you shouldn't use spaces at all?
> Are people here really making the argument that F# and MLs don't have clean syntax?
No. You are literally replying to a comment where I agreed that it is "clean".