On Thu, Jan 20, 2011 at 6:25 PM, Ben Kloosterman <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> For me the big things from BitC are
> - Can work without GC / non boxed types
>
- Non null-able types
> - Type safety
> - Optional Memory safety
> - Type classes for light polymorphism
> - Functional language support
> - Mutable data support.
> - Deal with unusual types ( eg cast a index to a byte array to a
> variable size message - i do this at the moment with an external C function
> ...)
>
This enumeration is very useful, and I agree with almost all of it. Type
classes are currently being challenged, but the benefits are clear and the
issues are clear. Not clear how that will play out, but however it does, it
will be the result of taking type classes as a starting point and dealing
with the practical engineering issues that arise.
Functional programming, on the other hand, strikes me as "up for grabs",
mainly because it's a term that means many different things. Some people
mean (in the end) first-class procedures. BitC certainly isn't going to give
that up. Others mean the ability to have pure [sub]programs. That's
currently up for grabs.
So it would be very helpful if you might expand on what you consider to be
the key properties of functional programming in the context of BitC...
shap
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