As a layman I would describe them as implicits like in current Scala [0] but better (easier to reason about). One thing which they allow is ad-hoc polymorphism

As a layman I would describe them as implicits like in current Scala [0] but better (easier to reason about). One thing which they allow is ad-hoc polymorphism like typeclasses. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.01895.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1512.01895.pdf https://old.reddit.com/r/ocaml/comments/4qan0w/modular_type_classes_vs_modular_implicits/ https://old.reddit.com/r/ocaml/comments/4qan0w/modular_type_... [0] https://scala-lang.org https://scala-lang.org