Hi!

I’m excited about everything that’s going on re. gradual typing and am really pleased to see that Jose and the team seem to be thinking everything through extremely well.

I realise that it’s still all WIP and the $ syntax may never even make it in but I have one small thing that’s half question, half suggestion that I thought I’d raise…

All the literature I’ve seen up till now has parentheses after all the types, e.g.
binary(), integer(), float(), MyStruct.t(), etc.

Why is this?

I realise some types may have arguments, e.g. dynamic({:ok, term}), (would list(integer) be a thing?), but for the ones that don’t, would there be any harm of having the convention to leave out the parentheses?

I know it’s a small thing but personally I would find seeing code like

$ %{ user: User.t, age: integer } -> result

SO much easier to mentally parse than

$ %{ user: User.t(), age: integer() } -> result()

especially when there are other parentheses involved and as the statement gets more complex.

I don’t see why there would be any ambiguity because in the context of a $ statement I assume there are no variables as such?

I’m sure there’ll be a good reason but interested to know - thanks!