C[omp]ute

From: "andrew cooke" <andrew@...>

Date: Sat, 23 Dec 2006 19:37:12 -0300 (CLST)

This is an interesting paper.  You might want to read it before my comments.

http://homepages.cwi.nl/~ralf/JavaGI/
http://homepages.cwi.nl/~ralf/JavaGI/paper.pdf

I enjoyed it largely because it helped clear my mind about the
relationship between Haskell and Java.  I walked down the road after
reading the first few pages, to buy some food from the local supermarket,
and on the way back was thinking "hmmm - it's not so much type classes, as
quantified existential types".  And, of course, then I read the section on
exactly that.  Which made me feel a bit less stupid than normal :o)

However, I don't think they have a snowball in hell's chance of getting
that accepted into a future Java release.  It's too big a change, and not
sufficiently orthogonal to what is already in the language - seems like
"implementation"s could replace classes, rather than augment them.

Andrew