[Haskell-cafe] If you'd design a Haskell-like language, what would you do different?

[MigMit]

On 21 Dec 2011, at 08:24, Alexander Solla wrote:

> I would rather have an incomplete semantic, and have all the incomplete parts collapsed into something we call "bottom".

I don't see the reason to limit ourselves to that. Of course, in total languages like Agda there is no need for (_|_). But in a turing-complete lazy language like Haskell we really need it. Of course, it makes not much sense to write "fix id" anywhere in your program; but, for example, lists like "1:2:3:4:5:_|_" can be really useful.

And denotational semantics is not just nice. It is useful. It's the best way to understand why the program we just wrote doesn't terminate.