On Sun, Apr 28, 2013 at 10:29 AM, gs <voldermort@hotmail.com> wrote:
Brandon Allbery <allbery.b <at> gmail.com> writes:

> ... which means that implementers should be free to "fix" data type contexts
> however they like, as they are now complier extensions which won't conflict
> with standard Haskell.
>
> Except that people do build older programs with newer Haskell compilers,
and it's bad to "repurpose" a syntax like that because it leads to strange
errors.

"Remembering" data type contexts shouldn't break existing code, unless it's
semantically broken already. (I'm sure that anyone could come up with a
theoretical example of code which would break

These statements are contradictory.
 
- but would it break any
real-world code?)

I do not support that criterion.  We use theory to ENSURE that no real-world code will break.