3 ms·

If I wanted to program in OCaml, id program in F# instead

• nukifw 1y ago
  Hi! Thank you for your interest (and for potentially reading this). Yes, F# is a very nice language, however, it seems to me that I am making a somewhat forced comparison between OCaml and F# in the following section: https://xvw.lol/en/articles/why-ocaml.html#ocaml-and-f https://xvw.lol/en/articles/why-ocaml.html#ocaml-and-f
  • Smaug123 1y ago
    You can hack up GADTs in F# - for example, https://github.com/Smaug123/WoofWare.Incremental/blob/9b8181ca1075102b1f62b06b82c8bb83c17f8f17/WoofWare.Incremental/Types.fs#L223 https://github.com/Smaug123/WoofWare.Incremental/blob/9b8181... (which uses https://github.com/G-Research/TypeEquality https://github.com/G-Research/TypeEquality ). (The other missing features I agree are missing.)
    • nukifw 1y ago
      Yes, the trick is expanded here: https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Johann_Patricia_2008_Foundations_For_Structured_Programming_with_gadts.pdf https://libres.uncg.edu/ir/asu/f/Johann_Patricia_2008_Founda... (if you have `Eq a b = Refl : a a eq` you should be able to encode every useful GADTs. But having a compiler support is nice for specifics reason like being able to "try" to detect unreachable cases in match branches for examples.
    • debugnik 1y ago
      I've used equality witnesses in F# before, they kinda work but can't match proper GADTs. First you'll need identity conversion methods on the witness, because patterns can't introduce type equalities, then you'll realise you can't refute unreachable branches for the same reason, so you still need to use exceptions.
  • moi2388 1y ago
    Thanks, that was an interesting read for sure!
• jimbob45 1y ago
  It's always weird when Microsoft pulls an "embrace, extend, extinguish" but the "extinguish" part happens without their involvement or desire and then we're all stuck wondering how Microsoft got left holding the bag.