yes, thanks, that was it. unfortunately the talk/paper i remember was for scala, not julia :o(
but abstract types with fields addresses the problem, i think (it was one of th ethings i looked for and couldn't find) andrew On Saturday, 28 December 2013 11:51:13 UTC-3, Isaiah wrote: > > Sounds like this: > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expression_problem > > > On Sat, Dec 28, 2013 at 9:39 AM, andrew cooke <and...@acooke.org<javascript:> > > wrote: > >> >> there's a classic problem in computer science on extending apis with both >> functions and state, and i remember a julia talk or paper saying that >> multiple dispatch solved this nicely. >> >> so i think reading that might help, but i can't remember what it's called >> (it the ... problem and i think there was a haskell paper by walder on it... >> >> andrew >> >>
