[Haskell-cafe] I hate Haskell's typeclasses
Derek Elkins
derek.a.elkins at gmail.com
Tue Apr 22 23:03:47 EDT 2008
On Mon, 2008-04-21 at 22:58 -0700, Jonathan Cast wrote:
> class Forceable alpha where
> seq :: alpha -> beta -> beta
>
> Instances derived automatically by the compiler, when possible, for
> every type (like Typeable should be). We can omit functions if
> desired (I don't remember why I thought this was a good idea). When
> you say
>
> f :: alpha -> beta
>
> or
>
> f :: C alpha => alpha -> beta
>
> The compiler adds implicit Forceable constraints on alpha and beta.
> But, if you say
>
> f :: !Forceable alpha => alpha -> beta
>
> The compiler leaves the Forceable alpha constraint off. Then you can
> say
>
> build :: (forall c. !Forceable c => (a -> c -> c) -> c -> c) -> [a]
>
> And the foldr/build law is still sound.
Why do you want types that lie, plus some crazy ad-hoc special case?
Why not just let f :: a -> b mean what you write as f :: !Forceable a =>
a -> b exactly as it would if seq were moved (back) into a class? Then
the free theorems would hold for the types as stated.
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