On Sat, May 23, 2009 at 4:48 PM, Viktor Cerovski <[email protected]> wrote: > ... > If you find Haskell's type system insufficiently powerful and category > theory of limited applicability to J, perhaps you should check out > http://www.lambdassociates.org/ Qi , built on top of LISP. >
I can't say I've found Haskell's type system insufficiently powerful. I haven't found it lacking in any way, but neither have I put it to much of a test. Insufficient power would not be the only form a deficit could take. Here's a memorable passage from the 1977 Turing Award lecture by John Backus: ] The lambda expression (with its substitution rules) is ] capable of defining all possible computable functions ] of all possible types and of any number of arguments. ] This freedom and power has its disadvantages as well ] as its obvious advantages. It is analogous to the power ] of unrestricted control statements in conventional ] languages: with unrestricted freedom comes chaos. The simplification that comes with judicious narrowing of available forms remains very attractive to me, and J seems to be the most developed language in this category. (If I decide to investigate what comes of pushing things in the opposite direction, I'll make sure I take a look at Qi. Thanks.) Tracy ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For information about J forums see http://www.jsoftware.com/forums.htm
