DDC compiler and effects; better than Haskell? (was Re: [Haskell-cafe] unsafeDestructiveAssign?)

[Dan Doel]

On Wednesday 12 August 2009 9:27:30 pm John A. De Goes wrote:
> So what, because effect systems might not eliminate *all* boilerplate,
> you'd rather use boilerplate 100% of the time? :-)

For most of my Haskell programs, the majority of the program is not made up of 
straight IO or ST functions, so how much boilerplate is it really eliminating? 
And since all the fooM functions have to exist for all the other monads, how 
much more boilerplate is it really to use them for IO and ST as well?

Off hand, I'd say I don't write foo and fooM versions of functions much in 
actual programs, either. Such duplication goes into libraries, and that would 
be the case for Disciple as well (until there's a way to extend the effect 
system outside the compiler).

So it's more of "effect systems eliminate 2% of my boilerplate; who 
(currently) cares? And is it worth having situations like 'you use monads for 
these effects, and the effect system for these other effects' in the language 
to do so?"

But, as I said, it's not that I don't think it's a fruitful area of research, 
I just don't think it's going to yield significantly nicer code than Haskell 
_yet_.

-- Dan