[Haskell-cafe] Best idiom for avoiding Defaulting warnings with ghc -Wall -Werror ??

[Dave Bayer]

On Jun 22, 2007, at 2:46 PM, David Roundy wrote:

> I think of top-level type declarations as type-checked comments,  
> rather
> than a seat-belt.  It forces you to communicate to others what a  
> function
> does, if that function may be used elsewhere.  I like this.   
> Although it can
> be cumbersome for quick and dirty code, developers trying to read  
> your code
> will thank you for it (unless you make *everything* top-level,  
> which is
> just poor coding style).
>
> -Wall -Werror isn't a seat belt, it's a coding-style guideline.

I don't think one can make blanket statements as to what type systems  
"are for". I doubt that the people who've dedicated their lives to  
type theory are doing so to provide style guidelines.

I like the quick and open-ended definition that types are compile- 
time proxies for run-time values. It happens that current type  
systems are closely tied to propositional logic, because so many  
logicians are drawn to the work. This need not be the case.

 From this point of view, one pays attention to type theory because  
one produces the best code by providing the best guidance to the  
compiler. -Wall -Werror is establishing a contract to do so.