Jonathan Cast wrote:
I don't think this has been mentioned explicitly yet, but the
discrepancy is purely for pedagogical purposes.
In Gofer, list comprehensions (and list syntax, IIRC) /was/ generalized
(to an arbitrary instance of MonadPlus). But that means that any
mistake in your syntax likely brings up a type error mentioning
MonadPlus. This confuses CS freshmen (who are easily confused anyway);
thus, Haskell restricts list syntax to lists so the type errors are
simpler.
By contrast, most CS freshman have already used languages with multiple
number types, so all you have to do is explain that type errors
involving Num are Haskell's way of dealing with them. So the syntax can
be generalized to the type class in that case without confusing freshmen
as much.
jcc
Well, that is a very good reason, but for newbies (or should I say, for
me ;-) ), most error messages are very confusing anyway! An since
Haskell is really an advanced language, why not go all the way? It feels
to me that for learning FP to newbies, a small subset of Haskell would
be more suitable to get started, so really easy error messages can be
given (Helium does that already?) Otherwise you would need a very clever
compiler/editor machine learning system, that looks at how a class of
users fixes a certain error, so the compiler can adapt its error message
the next time a similar pattern occurs (which is science fiction right
now I think...)
Now, these complex error messages are not just for Haskell; when I did
complicated C++ template programming, the error message sometimes became
as long as a full page when printed, and it took me more time to
decipher the error than to fix the code ;-)
PS: Gofer, is that an existing language? As far as some googling can
tell me, it's dead?
_______________________________________________
Haskell-Cafe mailing list
Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org
http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
