Philippa Cowderoy wrote:
For example, GADTs let you implement monads as interpreters by defining a datatype representing the abstract syntax tree that describes a computation - you can't get this to type without at a minimum existential types and for many monad operations you need the full power of GADTs to declare a corresponding constructor.
I'm yet to see the example of that need. I have seen the examples that the need for GADT was _claimed_ -- but then it turns out the example is implementable without GADT after all. Here are a few such examples: implementing State monad in a free term algebra Initial (term) algebra for a state monad http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/2005-January/008241.html Implementing an interpreter in HOAS with fix Even higher-order abstract syntax: typeclasses vs GADT http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2007-January/019012.html