17 Sep
2011
17 Sep
'11
7:33 p.m.
Sebastian Fischer writes:
Then Eq and Show must be superclasses of Num forever, which is the wart Ian wants to address. I think that these superclasses should be removed *and* the classes should be restructured along the lines of yap. I don't care in which order, so +1 from me.
If we had a Ring class, the superclasses of Num would be of much less consequence. We could do both, but they each have significant costs in breakage, which would need to be justified. If we're considering breaking changes to the basic Haskell 98 classes, we should examine the range of options and work out which gives the best value in terms of benefits over breakage.