Re: [racket-users] The Birth and Death of Units

Hello, Let me revive this by adding a data point on the usage of units. I have always thought in my mind units as allowing you to have a `plugin` system where you can plugin additional functionality at runtime. However, I had never really gotten my hands dirty. I decided to have a got under the f

Re: [racket-users] The Birth and Death of Units

Alexis, have you seen this?: https://people.mpi-sws.org/~rossberg/1ml/ "ML is two languages in one: there is the core, with types and expressions, and there are modules, with signatures, structures and functors. Modules form a separate, higher-order functional language on top of the core. There a

Re: [racket-users] The Birth and Death of Units

There's also Backpack, which adds something similar to ML's module system* to Haskell, except at the package level: https://plv.mpi-sws.org/backpack/backpack-paper.pdf * It's more similar to Rossberg & Dreyer's MixML than it is to Standard ML or OCaml's module systems. On Mon, Jan 22, 2018 at 2:1

Re: [racket-users] The Birth and Death of Units

I think MLers complain about two things here: — ML’s module system is basically a language that works at the type level. I think OldCamlers mean this mostly. — ML’s module system is also a typed lambda calculus whose basic values are structs, aka, atomic modules. You can get a sense of this w

Re: [racket-users] The Birth and Death of Units

Thank you for this explanation. I consider myself largely an outsider looking in on module systems, but I often hear SML and OCaml programmers complaining, wondering when Haskell is going to “get a real module system”. I’d like to do right thing in Hackett if I can, but I don’t really know what th

Re: [racket-users] The Birth and Death of Units

Units were the wrong approach to everyday modularity.They were, and they are, the correct solution to design problems such as those explained in our original paper on the idea. Units suffer from a large notational overhead for everyday use. The second edition, due to Owens and Flatt, does a b

[racket-users] The Birth and Death of Units

Hello, Racket’s units predate its module system. Indeed, it would seem that units were originally intended to *be* Racket’s module system, but evidently, that did not work out. My understanding is their replacement was due in large part to the desire for a more predictable macro compilation model,