5 ms·

Not only we do not need HKT, we also do not need Profunctor Optics.

purity_resigns 10y ago
They're a great way to massively slow down both your build and runtime by an order of magnitude. I work with Purescript on a daily basis and don't see it as anything other than an anti-feature that allows for masturbatory FP.
KirinDave 10y ago
F# and its spirit animal OCaml are really great precisely because of this attitude. They're really good at saying "No" to things that offer at best incremental improvements at the cost of significant complexity. "Profunctor Optics" is a great example. Cool paper, but no thanks.
- runT1ME 10y ago
  Higher kinded types reduce complexity in the same way generics reduce code complexity. If you think one makes things simpler but not the other, I would assume you're not familiar with it? Do you have examples of why it would add significant complexity? I use them constantly and it really simplifies my code a lot! Also, I don't believe 'profunctor optics' is a paper, I think it's just one (interesting) implementation of optics, which are useful in any language that encourages immutability.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    The complexity that HKT brings to F# is not just conceptual. It needs to exist in the CLR which will bring implementation tradeoffs. "Cool paper but no thanks" is a saying for when people come to you with an extremely new technique and want you to incorporate it at the language level with very little proofing in the field. "Profunctor optics" is the a description of how profunctors encode lenses and similar structures. I am aware. I also think that technique can cook in Haskell land for a few more years before non-research projects should uptake it.
    - runT1ME 10y ago
      Thanks for replying, yeah I suppose I didn't think about the ramifications of having to deal with reified generics and higher kinded types. I still think they're an amazing productivity boost, and the initial 'weirdness' of learning that particular abstraction pays off a tremendous amount in code readability. As for the 'cool paper' comment, I wasn't aware of this new jargon, thanks for informing heh. I'm not sure how well it will play outside of haskell, I've done a Scala encoding of them and it's a bit more awkward than other representations.
- willtim 10y ago
  Many people use the exact same argument to dismiss the entire functional programming field.
  - KirinDave 10y ago
    I'm sorry, but implicit slippery slope arguments are not a means by which one can force every functional language to run the project the way Haskell does. But it's also worth noting that this is not a rejection of the entire concept of lenses, just that right now Haskell's implementations leave a lot to be desired (e.g., abandon all error sanity, ye who enter here). Haskell is as much a research platform as a programming language, and as such it has the leisure to experiment this way. Everyone else will wait awhile for things to bake. Look what happened when Haskell built its entire stdlib on monad transformers and then we all realized they're awful compared to the alternatives.
    - willtim 10y ago
      I mostly agree with this. But nobody is "forcing" anything, one can still use Haskell and avoid the e.g. infamous (and non-idiomatic) lens library. But just as you haven't given up on lenses, I also don't agree with the wholesale rejection of ideas based on imperfect implementations, which is what prompted my comment.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
phillipcarter 10y ago
Hey tomas! This is why I love working on an open project like F#. We get to disagree in public! I would actually like Typeclasses, though I have serious reservations in terms of not breaking back compatibility. I'm certainly not about to get on a table and rant about how "it was truly the lack of better ad-hoc polymorphism via higher-kinded types that kept me from writing good software in F#!", and I see a danger in bifurcating the language .... but I like Typeclasses and think they do solve some more nuanced issues out there. I should probably be putting my opinions on the Typeclasses thread...
- daxfohl 10y ago
  Obligatory scene from The Jerk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSWBuZws30g&feature=youtu.be&t=47 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSWBuZws30g&feature=youtu.be...
tome 10y ago
I would love to know how you live without HKT. Modules, perhaps?

They're a great way to massively slow down both your build and runtime by an order of magnitude. I work with Purescript on a daily basis and don't see it as anything other than an anti-feature that allows for masturbatory FP.

KirinDave 10y ago

F# and its spirit animal OCaml are really great precisely because of this attitude. They're really good at saying "No" to things that offer at best incremental improvements at the cost of significant complexity. "Profunctor Optics" is a great example. Cool paper, but no thanks.

runT1ME 10y ago
Higher kinded types reduce complexity in the same way generics reduce code complexity. If you think one makes things simpler but not the other, I would assume you're not familiar with it? Do you have examples of why it would add significant complexity? I use them constantly and it really simplifies my code a lot! Also, I don't believe 'profunctor optics' is a paper, I think it's just one (interesting) implementation of optics, which are useful in any language that encourages immutability.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  The complexity that HKT brings to F# is not just conceptual. It needs to exist in the CLR which will bring implementation tradeoffs. "Cool paper but no thanks" is a saying for when people come to you with an extremely new technique and want you to incorporate it at the language level with very little proofing in the field. "Profunctor optics" is the a description of how profunctors encode lenses and similar structures. I am aware. I also think that technique can cook in Haskell land for a few more years before non-research projects should uptake it.
  - runT1ME 10y ago
    Thanks for replying, yeah I suppose I didn't think about the ramifications of having to deal with reified generics and higher kinded types. I still think they're an amazing productivity boost, and the initial 'weirdness' of learning that particular abstraction pays off a tremendous amount in code readability. As for the 'cool paper' comment, I wasn't aware of this new jargon, thanks for informing heh. I'm not sure how well it will play outside of haskell, I've done a Scala encoding of them and it's a bit more awkward than other representations.
willtim 10y ago
Many people use the exact same argument to dismiss the entire functional programming field.
- KirinDave 10y ago
  I'm sorry, but implicit slippery slope arguments are not a means by which one can force every functional language to run the project the way Haskell does. But it's also worth noting that this is not a rejection of the entire concept of lenses, just that right now Haskell's implementations leave a lot to be desired (e.g., abandon all error sanity, ye who enter here). Haskell is as much a research platform as a programming language, and as such it has the leisure to experiment this way. Everyone else will wait awhile for things to bake. Look what happened when Haskell built its entire stdlib on monad transformers and then we all realized they're awful compared to the alternatives.
  - willtim 10y ago
    I mostly agree with this. But nobody is "forcing" anything, one can still use Haskell and avoid the e.g. infamous (and non-idiomatic) lens library. But just as you haven't given up on lenses, I also don't agree with the wholesale rejection of ideas based on imperfect implementations, which is what prompted my comment.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]

phillipcarter 10y ago

Hey tomas! This is why I love working on an open project like F#. We get to disagree in public! I would actually like Typeclasses, though I have serious reservations in terms of not breaking back compatibility. I'm certainly not about to get on a table and rant about how "it was truly the lack of better ad-hoc polymorphism via higher-kinded types that kept me from writing good software in F#!", and I see a danger in bifurcating the language .... but I like Typeclasses and think they do solve some more nuanced issues out there. I should probably be putting my opinions on the Typeclasses thread...

daxfohl 10y ago
Obligatory scene from The Jerk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSWBuZws30g&feature=youtu.be&t=47 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSWBuZws30g&feature=youtu.be...

tome 10y ago

I would love to know how you live without HKT. Modules, perhaps?