25 Oct
2006
25 Oct
'06
1:25 a.m.
At the ICFP05 talk, Simon Peyton-Jones asserted that recursive instances are essential. I have publicly expressed doubts. Simon Peyton-Jones said: if you think otherwise, show me the code. And so I did.
... and I keep replying that you are exploiting the folklore trick of eliminating function-typed arguments by means of an extra type-code that must be interpreted by a sort of apply type class. I cannot speak for SPJ, but I would say for myself that this extra step of deferred interpretation is not like a "fix" for our approach; it greatly *modifies* our approach and takes the important idea of function combinators largely out of it. Your "flavor" may actually still be quite desirable, but that's another question :-) Ralf