[Haskell-cafe] do we need types?

[Tom Lokhorst]

Together with Sebastiaan Visser, I've been working on a library called
AwesomePrelude [1].

This is a library where we try to reimplement the Prelude by replacing
all concrete data types with type classes. This way you can have
multiple implementations of a "data type".

This is our current implementation of a list:

> class ListC j where
>   nil :: j [a]
>   cons :: j a -> j [a] -> j [a]
>   list :: j r -> (j a -> j [a] -> j r) -> j [a] -> j r

The two constructors (Nil, Cons) have been replaced by two equivalent
methods (nil, cons), and the concept of pattern matching for this data
type has been replaced by a single method (list).

A couple of weeks ago, we presented [2] the current version of the
library. Where we have JavaScript instances for the different type
classes. E.g:

> xs ++ ys

Represents a JavaScript AST that concatenates two JavaScript lists.

> And finally, would having only type classes make the type system any simpler?

In our library, the types definitely don't get simpler, but thats
probably because it also still deals with concrete JavaScript data
types.

- Tom Lokhorst

[1]: http://github.com/tomlokhorst/AwesomePrelude
[2]: http://tom.lokhorst.eu/2010/02/awesomeprelude-presentation-video

On Fri, Feb 26, 2010 at 1:35 PM, Pasqualino "Titto" Assini
<tittoassini at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi, just a silly question (or maybe more than one):
>
>
> In Haskell we have data types (Integer,[a],...) as well as type
> classes (Num, Ord...).
>
> But, if we have type classes do we still need types?
>
>
> Why shouldn't the objects that we process be defined only by their
> 'interfaces' (assuming that a type class is a kind of interface)?
>
>
> Maybe the real question is: are type classes a more primitive concept
> than data types?
>
> And if so, in a language that had only type classes what would a data
> declaration like the following map to:
>
> data List a = Cons a (List a) | Nil
>
> And what about pattern matching? Would that still be possible, and
> what form would it take?
>
>
> And finally, would having only type classes make the type system any simpler?
>
>
> Thanks,
>
>                         titto
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>