[Haskell-cafe] Refactoring status

[Bulat Ziganshin]

Hello C.M.Brown,

Thursday, January 3, 2008, 10:46:54 PM, you wrote:

>> i don't use
>> type signatures at all - this creates some problems when i wrote large
>> portion of code and try to make it compile, but nothing more

> I believe type signatures are the very essence of Haskell documentation!
> I'd much rather see a program with type signatures for functions and
> little (or no) comments over programs with no type signatures and
> ambigious comments (if any comments at all!).

> Type signatures really does make dealing with someone elses code that
> much easier.

well, i don't worry about types of things with which i work. i know
that it is a file, for example. its actual type depends on the
information i need inside this function. it may start as FileInfo type,
then after refactoring it will become CompressedFile or
(fileInfo,FileSize) type. while it's great to know types of every
variable to better understand how program works, adding type
signatures means more work when writing program and when changing it.
i want to express only data processing algorithm leaving all the
details to compiler. for me, ghc just "reads thoughts"

types and type signatures was required in classic languages to fight
with errors. but in haskell omitting type signatures doesn't make
program less reliable, so i don't need to write this extra code in
addition to the essential - algorithm itself. for the same reason, i
like pointless notation

-- 
Best regards,
 Bulat                            mailto:Bulat.Ziganshin at gmail.com