Keep the present Haskell record system!

[Claus Reinke]

>> my own opinion is that this scheme is like classes - they can be
>> resolved at compile time in most real cases but noone do it because
>> code will be too large. if some function can accept any records which
>> has field 'a' then to use this function on records of different types
>> we need either to do specialization or use scheme with non-constant
>> access time

for those who haven't seen it, the following paper explored the former
possibility with good success (at a time when type classes where 
still somewhat simpler:):

    Dictionary-free Overloading by Partial Evaluation
    Mark P. Jones, ACM SIGPLAN Workshop on Partial 
    Evaluation and Semantics-Based Program Manipulation, 
    Orlando, Florida, June 1994.
    http://www.cse.ogi.edu/~mpj/pubs/pepm94.html

cheers,
claus