2009/11/25 Michael Mossey
I'm fairly new to Haskell, and starting to write some big projects. Previously I used OO exclusively, mostly Python. I really miss the "namespace" capabilities... a class can have a lot of generic method names which may be identical for several different classes because there is no ambiguity.
In my musical application, many "objects" (or in Haskell, data) have a time associated with them. In Python I would have an accessor function called "time" in every class.
So if I have objects/data note1, cursor1, and staff1,
Python: note1.time() cursor1.time() staff1.time()
Haskell needs something like note_time note1 cursor_time cursor1 staff_time staff1
which is a lot more visually disorganized.
It looks like you use record syntax. This is not bad per se, but you can use Haskell classes to get an OO feeling. Like that: class Time a where time :: a -> Time instance Time Note where time = note_time instance Time Cursor where time = cursor_time
What's worse, I have a moderate case of RSI (repetitive strain injury) so I type slowly and depend on abbreviations a lot. I use the souped-up abbreviation capabilities of Emacs. Let's say I have a field/member-variable called orientedPcSet that is used across many classes. In Python, I can create an abbreviation for that and it is useful many times. In Haskell, I might need
someType_orientedPcSet someOtherType_orientedPcSet thirdType_orientedPcSet
Same here, I think.