[Haskell-cafe] What's the deal with Clean?

[Ben Lippmeier]

David Leimbach wrote:
> I have to admit, the first time I hit the wiki page for DDC I said to 
> myself "Self, this sounds crazy complicated".  Then I read part of the 
> PDF (your thesis I believe) about Region Types on the bus ride to work 
> and thought.  "Gee I think I scared myself off too quickly".
>
> Uniqueness typing is quite interesting in Clean, but to control 
> aliasing, like really *control* aliasing, that's just far out man.
>
> So I still have to wrap my head around "why this isn't going to get 
> completely out of control" and see why it's all safer than just 
> writing C code but I must say the attention I will be paying to DDC 
> has just gone quite a bit up.

:) A correct C program is just as safe as a correct Haskell/Disciple 
program.

If you're using destructive update then aliasing, side effects and 
mutability all start to matter. It might look complicated when you 
reflect all these things in the type system, but you're really just 
getting a handle on the inherent complications of the underlying program.

I suppose the trick is to be able to ignore said complications when you 
just don't care, or they're not relevant for your particular problem...

Ben.