5 ms·

The summary: "Hickey did not invent FP, how dares he?"

by juskrey 12y ago

nickik 12y ago
People keep attacking him whenever he interduces something. Why? Every time he releases something, he also shows from what research it originated. Go back to the first transducer talk and you will see the references.
- lomnakkus 12y ago
  Personally, I don't mind him too much even though I'm a typeful-programming weenie. That said, he does have a tendency to somewhat unfoundedly say "... and you couldn't do this in a typed language" (or at least allude to it)... whereas people again and again show that, yes, it could be done in a statically typed language. In fact, this is trivially true in a sense as shown by Bob Harper[1] another person who is undoubtedly hugely influential, but who I have trouble with because of his obvious bias and trollish ways. (I think Rich is absolutely spot on on many of the more abstract things about or industry/craft, but this is just one of those details that irks me.) [1] http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/dynamic-languages-are-static-languages/ http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/dynamic-lang...
  - ajanuary 12y ago
    In the strangeloop talk his argument seemed to be that you couldn't use types to describe the entire and exact contract of transducers. Which is true (and true of almost anything), but you can at least describe a significant enough chunk of it to reduce errors. As always it's a trade off. As you try to capture more of the contract, you massively increase complexity, sometimes to the point of reducing usability (i.e. staring at an obtuse type error, or trying to work out how to do basic things with a function just from a Scala type) It's my interpretation that "you can't type transducers" is an invitation to think more deeply about types and the limitations in what they can express, mixed in with some "get off my back about creating a dynamically typed language".
    - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
      Isn't the problem with transducer typing is that transducers aren't very functional? In one of your posts you wrote: System.in.setTransducer(lowerAlpha); In the LINQ/functional origami world, you could only produce new streams, not transform an existing stream in place. Because a new stream is computed, a new type can be computed. However, from what I've seen with transducers, they would be limited to basically Func<T, Predicate<T>, T> signatures.
      - lomnakkus 12y ago
        That's part of it, but of course you can embed monadic types/effects within the appropriate combinators. (I think "tel" showed an example of this in the original "transducers" post)

The summary: "Hickey did not invent FP, how dares he?"

by juskrey 12y ago

The summary: "Hickey did not invent FP, how dares he?"

People keep attacking him whenever he interduces something. Why? Every time he releases something, he also shows from what research it originated. Go back to the first transducer talk and you will see the references.

lomnakkus 12y ago
Personally, I don't mind him too much even though I'm a typeful-programming weenie. That said, he does have a tendency to somewhat unfoundedly say "... and you couldn't do this in a typed language" (or at least allude to it)... whereas people again and again show that, yes, it could be done in a statically typed language. In fact, this is trivially true in a sense as shown by Bob Harper[1] another person who is undoubtedly hugely influential, but who I have trouble with because of his obvious bias and trollish ways. (I think Rich is absolutely spot on on many of the more abstract things about or industry/craft, but this is just one of those details that irks me.) [1] http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/dynamic-languages-are-static-languages/ http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/19/dynamic-lang...
- ajanuary 12y ago
  In the strangeloop talk his argument seemed to be that you couldn't use types to describe the entire and exact contract of transducers. Which is true (and true of almost anything), but you can at least describe a significant enough chunk of it to reduce errors. As always it's a trade off. As you try to capture more of the contract, you massively increase complexity, sometimes to the point of reducing usability (i.e. staring at an obtuse type error, or trying to work out how to do basic things with a function just from a Scala type) It's my interpretation that "you can't type transducers" is an invitation to think more deeply about types and the limitations in what they can express, mixed in with some "get off my back about creating a dynamically typed language".
  - seanmcdirmid 12y ago
    Isn't the problem with transducer typing is that transducers aren't very functional? In one of your posts you wrote: System.in.setTransducer(lowerAlpha); In the LINQ/functional origami world, you could only produce new streams, not transform an existing stream in place. Because a new stream is computed, a new type can be computed. However, from what I've seen with transducers, they would be limited to basically Func<T, Predicate<T>, T> signatures.
    - lomnakkus 12y ago
      That's part of it, but of course you can embed monadic types/effects within the appropriate combinators. (I think "tel" showed an example of this in the original "transducers" post)