Zachary Turner wrote:
Everything I've read has said that it's generally considered good practice to specify the full type of a function before the definition. Why is this?
I'm still a newbie but using (and leaving) the type definitions helps me quickly recall what a routine is doing and also provides handy documentation when I have to hack (uhh ... I mean modify) the code weeks later. I also agree that when coding having the definitions 'localize' the type error messages resulting in faster development. Tom
It almost seems to go against the principles of type inference. Why let the compiler infer types if you're just going to tell it what types to use for everything? Ok well, not really for everything, you don't typically specify types for local bindings, but still why the inconsistency? I have a little experience with ML and F# and there you're encouraged to -not- specify types explicitly, and let the compiler infer them for you. In fact, it seems like it would be fairly common where you specify a type that is -less- general than the type that the compiler would infer for you, because the most general type might involve a combination of type classes used in various ways, and it may not always be obvious to the programmer how to specify it correctly.