[Haskell-cafe] RE: Modelling Java Interfaces with Existential data types

[Mike Aizatsky]

Andre,

Thanks for paper pointers.

> Hmm, what's the higher goal of what you're trying to achieve?  I, like
> you, came from a background of object-oriented programming, and I've
> always managed to avoid making a list containing more than one type
> after re-thinking about the problem.  You can do it, sure, but the
> typical reasons for doing so in Haskell are very different from doing
> this in, say, Java.

I'm simulating the interaction of different physical entities with
particles. Basically I have this:

class PhysicalObject a where
	interact1 :: a -> InteractionParameters -> InteractionResult

Also I have the Scene data structure, which has the list of physical
objects, read from a configuration file. 

data Scene = Scene {....., objects :: [AnyPhysicalObject], ....}

The Scene is than passed to different simulation algorithms

type Simulator = Scene -> SimulationResult

All the simulators don't care about different PhysicalObjects. They are even
mostly pluggable. All simulator should know is the object interaction with
particles.

Regards,
Mike