3 ms·

Side question : Is there any example of a language that has successfully added HKT after it was released and became popular ?

by bsaul 6y ago

littlestymaar 6y ago
I'd say no, given that no language with HKT has ever been popular (sorry Haskell, you're cool, but not “popular”)…
- ivanbakel 6y ago
  I was going to object, but in doing my own research I found that Haskell ranked even below Dart in the SO Developer Survey for languages in use - and I certainly wouldn't consider Dart popular, since I've never seen, let alone met, anyone using it. That said, "popular" is a very contextual term. Within certain classes of programmers (and I don't mean the obvious tautological one) Haskell is extremely popular, and fit for purpose. I assume the same is true for Dart. And I would add that, in those circles, the introduction of advanced HKT features like RankNTypes has been extremely successful.
  - yen223 6y ago
    Dart is seeing a bit of interest thanks to Flutter, the cross-platform UI toolkit.
- gpderetta 6y ago
  template template parameters and nested template classes work as HKT in C++ in practice (and are extensively used for exactly that purpose), and I think C++ counts as a popular language.
hurril 6y ago
Would you consider Scala? It wasn't wildly popular before 2.8 (which is when HKTs were added) but not unpopular either.
- Lermex 6y ago
  I was surprised that to learn that HKT weren't part of Scala from the beginning and had to look that up. You're a bit wrong about when that happened: it was Scala 2.5 in 2007, not 2.8 which was released in 2010.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago
C++ did during the standardization to C++98 with template template parameters. C++ before 1998 was a very popular language, maybe even more popular relatively than it is now.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
I don't think they make or break a language for 99% of the developers. You can get 90% there without HKT and a similar developer experience. Current rust has some implementations which are simil-functors and simil-monads. This is just polishing the language by lifting a restriction.
- valenterry 6y ago
  > I don't think they make or break a language for 99% of the developers. True > You can get 90% there without HKT and a similar developer experience. Not really though. Unless similar developer experience means you suffer like hell and still have to deal with runtime errors and worse performance.

Side question : Is there any example of a language that has successfully added HKT after it was released and became popular ?

by bsaul 6y ago

Side question : Is there any example of a language that has successfully added HKT after it was released and became popular ?

littlestymaar 6y ago

I'd say no, given that no language with HKT has ever been popular (sorry Haskell, you're cool, but not “popular”)…

ivanbakel 6y ago
I was going to object, but in doing my own research I found that Haskell ranked even below Dart in the SO Developer Survey for languages in use - and I certainly wouldn't consider Dart popular, since I've never seen, let alone met, anyone using it. That said, "popular" is a very contextual term. Within certain classes of programmers (and I don't mean the obvious tautological one) Haskell is extremely popular, and fit for purpose. I assume the same is true for Dart. And I would add that, in those circles, the introduction of advanced HKT features like RankNTypes has been extremely successful.
- yen223 6y ago
  Dart is seeing a bit of interest thanks to Flutter, the cross-platform UI toolkit.
gpderetta 6y ago
template template parameters and nested template classes work as HKT in C++ in practice (and are extensively used for exactly that purpose), and I think C++ counts as a popular language.

hurril 6y ago

Would you consider Scala? It wasn't wildly popular before 2.8 (which is when HKTs were added) but not unpopular either.

Lermex 6y ago
I was surprised that to learn that HKT weren't part of Scala from the beginning and had to look that up. You're a bit wrong about when that happened: it was Scala 2.5 in 2007, not 2.8 which was released in 2010.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 6y ago

C++ did during the standardization to C++98 with template template parameters. C++ before 1998 was a very popular language, maybe even more popular relatively than it is now.

jokethrowaway 6y ago

I don't think they make or break a language for 99% of the developers. You can get 90% there without HKT and a similar developer experience. Current rust has some implementations which are simil-functors and simil-monads. This is just polishing the language by lifting a restriction.

valenterry 6y ago
> I don't think they make or break a language for 99% of the developers. True > You can get 90% there without HKT and a similar developer experience. Not really though. Unless similar developer experience means you suffer like hell and still have to deal with runtime errors and worse performance.