Jacques Carette wrote:
I guess I prefer a type annotation over a dummy function that is there just to force the type checker to believe me. If one has to force the type checker, may as well do it with a type, not code!
I agree totally. Also, I think there is a more general issue regarding the relative importance of type inference when programming, since it seems to me that a lot of awkwardness is introduced into Haskell by the insistence that the type inference algorithm should be able to infer everything by itself to surprise the programmer with knowledge that the programmer should already know in the first place and could quite easily have written down directly. An example is the fact that constructors and record field names currently have to be unique within a whole module. If instead of this, constructors and field names were always in seperate namespaces indexed by type, instead of them determining the type, programming would be tremendously easier because the same names could be reused without worrying about conflicts. eg compare data Either a b = Left a | Right b -- Prelude got there first as usual data Location = Location_Left | Location_Right foo (Location_Left, Location_Left, Location_Left) = Left 5 foo (Location_Left, Location_Left, Location_Right) = Right "something" -- 6 more wordy patterns with data Either a b = Left a | Right b data Location = Left | Right -- all names local to type Location foo :: (Location, Location, Location) -> Either Int String foo (Left, Left, Left) = Left 5 foo (Left, Left, Right) = Right "something" -- 6 more simple patterns Regards, Brian.