Comment by junon
3 years ago
> Can you spot the mistake?
Nope, so now I have no incentive to use your config format because it's established something is wrong and it's completely non-obvious.
Thanks for not wasting my time, I guess.
3 years ago
> Can you spot the mistake?
Nope, so now I have no incentive to use your config format because it's established something is wrong and it's completely non-obvious.
Thanks for not wasting my time, I guess.
This opinion is ironic because this is exactly what the author intended to describe -- the typo IS hard to find.
The "Hello, World" example is nothing more than JSON, showing a string repeated 3 times. On the third time, "bill" is misspelled with "blil". The next tab shows how Dhall uses a variable definition to prevent this type of error.
I too spent the whole time scrutinizing the syntax and ignoring the values, since this is an intro to the language and not to Bill’s dotfiles. I was ultimately unable to deduce the presumed syntax error and independently came to the same misconclusion.
It can't be a syntax error though as it evaluates successfully as demonstrated by the right-hand side.
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I took it to mean "can you find the syntax error". It wasn't clear they meant the text
Yeah, I eventually caught it but wished I hadn't wasted my time on it - seems like something they could better have shown with an animation
Sure, but how do I know that the user doesn't store their public key in /home/blil?
I mean... from context, it's probably a mistake, but on the other hand we don't actually know the structure of that filesystem or the author's intentions.
They are trying to tell a story about how Dhall helps you avoid hard to notice errors, but they aren't doing a great job.
Would be cool if they had a three panel story:
* using json with the typo
* using dhall with the typo
* using dhall with variables to avoid the typo
Might be easier to understand.
Meh, I think you're pointing out why doing this with a variable is better. In other words that mistake is the entire point of the example. Perhaps the definitions tab could make it more clear what the mistake was.
Yeah, I spent 3 minutes looking for a syntax error in 5 lines of code. I couldn’t find anything. I’m obviously too dumb to figure out this language so I guess I’ll just stick with YAML.
How could they make the mistake obvious? It's a mistake in a string value!
It had me confused too. I figured I was looking for a syntax error in the config format since it’s an introduction…to the config format.
How about not making the very first thing on the page a confusing puzzle?
They should at least reveal the answer somewhere immediately close by. I couldn't spot the error after a few minutes, came to the comments to find out what it was. Not a great introduction because you're asking someone to spot an error in something they don't know the syntax or ruleset for.
The project looks cool though.
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