[Haskell-cafe] Re: What I wish someone had told me...

[Jonathan Cast]

On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 16:25 -0500, Derek Elkins wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-10-16 at 13:53 -0700, Daryoush Mehrtash wrote:
> > So does this mean that the reason for complexity of generics is the
> > Java inheritance?
> > 
> > BTW, in addition to the article I posted, This site:
> > http://www.angelikalanger.com/GenericsFAQ/JavaGenericsFAQ.html   has a
> > FAQ on Java generics that is 500+ pages long!     In Haskell you have
> > parametrized types but I don't think you need 500+ page faq to explain
> > it.  
> 
> All you need is a T-shirt: http://www.cafepress.com/skicalc

I think the same explanation would work for Java, too, except:

* Many more people know Java than know generics (or this was true at one
time), leading to
* A substantial market for teaching generics as a separate language
feature.

I think the market for pedagogical material for teaching polymorphism
(exclusively) to Haskellers is much smaller.  Instead, polymorphism is
taught as an integral part of the language, to people who can't be said
to have mastered Haskell yet at all.

So I don't think counting page sizes of documents associated to the two
language features gives a fair comparison of there complexity.

jcc