[ghc-steering-committee] Please review #641: Wildcard binders in type declarations

[Simon Peyton Jones]

>
> Do you worry about the implementation because of future maintenance costs?
> Or because of the immediate cost of developing the feature?


Mostly the former.  It's just a bit more un-forced complexity.

As far as I can see, there aren't other objections to this design besides
> the cost, right? There's no real possibility of an alternate, conflicting
> design for data type arguments, is there?
>

It's just Occam's razor.   No one is asking for this.  And I'm unconvinced
by "future proofiing" because it's hard to correctly anticipate the future.

Simon

On Fri, 22 Mar 2024 at 08:13, Arnaud Spiwack <arnaud.spiwack at tweag.io>
wrote:

> Simon,
>
> Do you worry about the implementation because of future maintenance costs?
> Or because of the immediate cost of developing the feature?
>
> As far as I can see, there aren't other objections to this design besides
> the cost, right? There's no real possibility of an alternate, conflicting
> design for data type arguments, is there?
>
> On Thu, 21 Mar 2024 at 10:57, Simon Peyton Jones <
> simon.peytonjones at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Dear Steering Committee
>>
>> Vlad proposes to amend proposal #425
>> <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/blob/master/proposals/0425-decl-invis-binders.rst>to
>> permit more wildcard binder forms in type declarations:
>>   https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/641
>>
>> You may find it easiest to look at the rich diff
>> <https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/641/files?short_path=cb2a762#diff-cb2a762676d938436a07317bbd007570b5efdfa00b40763b897ee920694bcbb5>
>> .
>>
>> This is a pretty small generalisation which would allow
>>
>> data T (( (a :: k1) :: k2)) = ...
>>
>> in which the binder has multiple kind signatures and redundant parens.
>> The change is *not driven by user need*, but rather solely by
>> *uniformity*: these same forms are permitted in function definitions:
>>
>> f :: forall (a :: k). blah
>> f @(((a::k1)::k2))) = ...
>>
>> is permitted.
>>
>> It imposes a change on Template Haskell syntax too.
>>
>> The implementation becomes a bit more complicated; more recursive data
>> types, etc.  Nothing hard, but more.
>>
>> It's not a big deal either way.  Very few people expressed a view on
>> GitHub.  My personal view is that the modest (albeit non-zero) gain does
>> not justify the definite (albeit modest) pain. I would leave this until
>> someone actually wants it.
>>
>> Vlad argues for future-proofing, but my experience is that an eye to the
>> future is sensible when you are making changes anyway; but making unforced
>> changes solely for the future risks incurring pain now that, when the
>> future comes, turns out to have been a poor investment.  We may have
>> correctly anticipated, or we may not.
>>
>> So my recommendation is to park this until we get a real user demand.
>>
>> It's a perfectly sensible proposal, but adopting it is a judgement call.
>> I'll leave a week for committee responses, and then we can just vote.
>>
>> Simon
>>
>> On Thu, 21 Mar 2024 at 08:07, Adam Gundry <adam at well-typed.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Dear Committee,
>>>
>>> Vlad proposes to amend proposal #425 to permit more wildcard binder
>>> forms in type declarations:
>>>
>>> https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals/pull/641
>>>
>>> I'd like to nominate Simon PJ as the shepherd.
>>>
>>> Please guide us to a conclusion as outlined in
>>> https://github.com/ghc-proposals/ghc-proposals#committee-process
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> Adam
>>>
>>>
>>> --
>>> Adam Gundry, Haskell Consultant
>>> Well-Typed LLP, https://www.well-typed.com/
>>>
>>> Registered in England & Wales, OC335890
>>> 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX, England
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>
>
> --
> Arnaud Spiwack
> Director, Research at https://moduscreate.com and https://tweag.io.
>
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