[Haskell-cafe] Restricted type classes

[David Menendez]

On Sun, Sep 5, 2010 at 8:40 AM, John Lato <jwlato at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> On Sat, Sep 4, 2010 at 12:34 PM, David Menendez <dave at zednenem.com> wrote:
>>
>> On Fri, Sep 3, 2010 at 8:23 AM, John Lato <jwlato at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> > +1 for using the proper constraints, and especially for bringing over
>> > Pointed (and anything else that applies).
>>
>> What's the argument for Pointed? Are there many types which are
>> instances of Pointed but not Applicative? Are there many algorithms
>> which require Pointed but not Applicative?
>
> Having Pointed is categorically the right thing to do, which is why I argue
> for its inclusion.

Why is it categorically the right thing to do?

When Conor McBride was promoting the use of Applicative (then called
Idiom), he provided several instances and algorithms showing that it
was a useful generalization of Monad, and it still took several years
and a few papers[1] before Applicative found its way into the standard
library.

In other words, we didn't add Applicative and then discover
Traversable later. Traversable was a big part of the argument for why
Applicative is useful.

  [1] Idioms: applicative programming with effects
  <http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~ctm/Idiom.pdf>

> Also, I think it would be prudent to avoid a situation
> with the possibility of turning into a rehash of the
> Functor/Applicative/Monad mess.

Granted, but let's not rush blindly in the opposite direction.

> Are there any good reasons for not including it?  Just because we don't have
> a use now doesn't mean it might not be useful in the future.

This is an argument for putting every member of the container API into
its own independent class. Why make things more complicated for little
or no benefit?

-- 
Dave Menendez <dave at zednenem.com>
<http://www.eyrie.org/~zednenem/>