Re: [stack] Advantages of cat, joy ..?

On Feb 22, 2009, at 10:11 AM, Stevan Apter wrote:

> typing is another language feature i don't want to think about.
> i was discouraged from learning haskell because half the messages
> posted in their newsgroup involved some typing conundrum. the last
> thing i need is to get stopped in my tracks by one of these.

GHC is really a type systems research vehicle. It has piles of  
extensions with overlapping (or even identical) goals that interact in  
complicated ways. There are a few extensions I don't understand at all.

The system in Cat is nothing like this. It's a very straightforward  
extension of Hindley-Milner. On top of that, all collections are  
essentially dynamically typed. I see no reason you couldn't implement  
your K-style primitives in Cat.

I'm not saying you'd like it or find the types useful, but I'm sure  
you'd not get hung up on it the way people can with GHC's extensions.  
It's simple stuff.

> i guess the easiest way to put it is that i don't want my programs to
> fail in more than five or six ways.

Aye, that's why I like types!

- John