John Hughes <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> One of the good things about Haskell 1.2's module system is that
> it's `light'
I also like the lightness of Haskell's module system but experience the
shortcomings described by Will Partain (here or on comp.lang.functional or
both?).
I know of at least one *large* Modula-2 software project that turned into a
fiasco. A well placed engineer identified the amount of typing, that is the
shear bulk of code required by Modula-2, as a contributory factor. Modula-2's
uncompromising Module system probably had a lot to to with this.
> A little anecdote for you. ... Making the change in the Haskell
> version would have meant changing a large number of type signatures,
> `and we didn't have time to do that'. Erlang is of course untyped.
>
> I find that rather chilling.
Me too, especially if people were engineering safety critical systems with
these criteria, however my own experience is generally the opposite. From time
to time I make wholesale changes to our current medium-sized Haskell project;
these changes are safe because the type system provides good guarantees. The
scope for this sort of thing would be somewhat reduced with a weaker
static-typing regime.
Has anybody considered limiting the 1.3 upgrade to the new much-improved I/O
libraries?
Chris Dornan [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Department of Computer Science
University of Bristol +44 117 9289000 x 3676
