[Haskell-cafe] Generics Versus Parametric Polymorphism

Don Stewart dons at galois.com
Wed Mar 11 02:29:36 EDT 2009


mark.spezzano:
> Hi,
> 
> Just wondering if Generics and Parametric polymorphism are one and the same in
> Haskell.
> 
> I read (somewhere!) an article stating that generics might be included in
> Haskell Prime but I thought that they’re already included as parametric
> polymorphism.
> 
> Did I misread something? Or is generics in Haskell referring to something
> completely different.

Parametric polymorphism is kinda boring in Haskell -- since it's been
there since the beginning.

We tend to reserve the term "generics" for higher order, and fancier,
polymorphism. These kinds of things:

    http://hackage.haskell.org/packages/archive/pkg-list.html#cat:generics

-- Don


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