On 28/10/2010 10:15, Alexander Kjeldaas wrote:
Hi haskellers.
Reading through the Haskell Prime suggestions, one that caught my eye is the CompositionAsDot issue.
I'm especially thinking of the Pro issue: * Paves the way for using . as the selection operator in improved record or module systems
I think I recognize this issue from common lisp. Basically the code becomes verbose because accessor functions usually need to redundantly encode the name of the module or struct in its name. The alternative is to require users to import qualified, and that doesn't deal with the occasional intra-module collision.
This is a typical large-software-system issue and it annoys me a little that Haskell seems to have inherited the problems from common lisp.
I worry that in large systems, a very conservative coding standard is needed with quite verbose naming conventions as that's the only safe way to avoid these conflicts in a large system while allowing refactoring code etc.
What is the current thinking on this issue?
Thanks, Alexander
TypeDirectedNameResolution would solve the problem you describe, and make Haskell a lot more suitable for real-world development (which is usually large-software-system, or at least must be capable of scaling to one).