[Haskell-cafe] Factoring into type classes

[Iavor Diatchki]

Hi,

On Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 11:06 AM, Jonathan Cast
<jonathanccast at fastmail.fm> wrote:
> On Mon, 2009-01-19 at 10:59 -0800, Iavor Diatchki wrote:
>> Hello,
>> The multitude of newtypes in the Monoid module are a good indication
>> that the Monoid class is not a good fit for the class system
>
> I would say rather that the class system is not a good fit for Monoid.
> Proposals for local instances, multiple instances, instance
> import/export control, etc. come up quite frequently on this list; the
> phenomena in question are not restricted to Monoid.

I disagree with you but that is a moot point because we are discussing
Haskell, which does not have any of these features.  Also, I find that
in many situations where people want to use them, simpler solutions
(like some of the ideas I mentioned in my  previous post) suffice.
That is not to say that we should stop trying to figure out how to
improve the class system, but language changes require a lot more work
than improving the design of the libraries.

>> I usually
>> avoid using the "newtype" trick as I find it inconvenient:  usually
>> the newtype does not have the same operations as the underlying type
>> and so it cannot be used directly, and if you are going to wrap thing
>> just when you use the class methods,
>
> OTOH, I think you mean here `when you use class methods and when you use
> overloaded functions'.

Sure, the point is that you are essentially adding a type annotation,
which is like using a non-overloaded function.  Compare, for example:
"mappend add x y"  and "getSum (mappend (Sum x) (Sum y))".  I think
that the first one is quite a bit more readable but, of course, this
is somewhat subjective.

-Iavor