[Haskell-cafe] Re: ANNOUNCE: GHC survey results

[Johannes Waldmann]

Bulat Ziganshin wrote:

> JW> interface Figure
> JW> class Circle implements Figure
> JW> class Box implements Figure
> 
> this don't give ability to create polymorphic collections

You mean in Haskell? I would probably use existential types then.
Something like   data EFigure = forall f . Figure f => EFigure f
and - as Georg Martius once pointed out -
with an additional "instance Figure EFigure ..."
to avoid at least some of the (un)boxing code.

As a whole, this *does* look messy - Java programmers can nicely write
the name of the interface when they mean some unspecified instance:

Figure f = new Circle () ...

Of course that's only so because their interfaces (type classes)
are always unary predicates. I definitely would not give up multi
parameter type classes from Haskell. But still the Java notation
looks neat and concise.
-- 
-- Johannes Waldmann -- Tel/Fax (0341) 3076 6479/80 --
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