4 ms·

Whenever I play with that idea in my head I get hung up on the question wether one could go even further down that road and drop variable names as a concept sep

by usrusr 8y ago

Whenever I play with that idea in my head I get hung up on the question wether one could go even further down that road and drop variable names as a concept separate from types. If you already have a Surname instead of a String and a Birthday instead of a Date, why duplicate that into surname and bday? In a way, variable names are a bit like informal domain subtypes. Could we make them formal? I'm really not sure if that could be in any way practical at all, but I like the idea.

andrewflnr 8y ago
There is/was a programming language called Wake that used this idea. The supposed domain is down right now, so this documentation source code is the best reference I can find in a few minutes: https://github.com/MichaelRFairhurst/wake-compiler-docs/blob/master/faq.html#L45 https://github.com/MichaelRFairhurst/wake-compiler-docs/blob...
GavinMcG 8y ago
That's where my mind was headed as well. You'd still want variables for passing around instances (in a general sense; not specifically an OO sense) but everything else could be defined on the type. Sort of a types-as-classes approach.
rbonvall 8y ago
In some languages you don't give field names, just types. You bind fields to names only when pattern matching. For example in Haskell: type Year = Int type Month = Int type Day = Int -- fields have no names, just types data Date = Date Year Month Day -- we bind fields to names only when necessary next (Date y 12 31) = Date (y + 1) 1 1 next (Date y m d) | d == daysOf m = Date y (m + 1) 1 | otherwise = Date y m (d + 1) where daysOf = (!!) [0, 31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31] Is something like this what you mean?
- usrusr 8y ago
  Thank you, good to know. Maybe those who don't know Haskell are doomed to reinvent isolated parts of it.
  - Iceland_jack 8y ago
    ( yes )

by usrusr 8y ago

andrewflnr 8y ago

There is/was a programming language called Wake that used this idea. The supposed domain is down right now, so this documentation source code is the best reference I can find in a few minutes: https://github.com/MichaelRFairhurst/wake-compiler-docs/blob/master/faq.html#L45 https://github.com/MichaelRFairhurst/wake-compiler-docs/blob...

GavinMcG 8y ago

That's where my mind was headed as well. You'd still want variables for passing around instances (in a general sense; not specifically an OO sense) but everything else could be defined on the type. Sort of a types-as-classes approach.

rbonvall 8y ago

In some languages you don't give field names, just types. You bind fields to names only when pattern matching. For example in Haskell: type Year = Int type Month = Int type Day = Int -- fields have no names, just types data Date = Date Year Month Day -- we bind fields to names only when necessary next (Date y 12 31) = Date (y + 1) 1 1 next (Date y m d) | d == daysOf m = Date y (m + 1) 1 | otherwise = Date y m (d + 1) where daysOf = (!!) [0, 31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31] Is something like this what you mean?

usrusr 8y ago
Thank you, good to know. Maybe those who don't know Haskell are doomed to reinvent isolated parts of it.
- Iceland_jack 8y ago
  ( yes )