On Fri, Jun 5, 2015 at 2:58 AM, Matt Rice <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 4, 2015 at 10:56 PM, Keean Schupke <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> On 4 Jun 2015 22:16, "Matt Rice" <[email protected]> wrote:
>>> I tend to agree, this is in part why I was yammering about
>>> constructors & first class constructors & the ability to wrap
>>> constructors with regards to the
>>>
>>> struct Triangle { Point a; Point b; Point c; }
>>> vs struct RightTriangle { Point a; Point b; Point c;} example....
>>>
>>> because it makes sense to put the constraint checking at the
>>> constructor precisely so that every function that depends upon the
>>> RightTriangle assertion relies on the fact that the assertion was done
>>> at construction time, rather than doing the the assertion in every
>>> function depends on RightTriangle constraint.
>>
>> Haskell used to allow this, but it has been deprecated. It turns out to be
>> bad for code reuse. The idea is in functional programming we prefer simple
>> general types like "pair" and we don't re-invent them for every pair of
>> properties.
>>
>> For example you are better off using a tuple of the points (where points
>> itself is a tuple) and using type synonyms.
>>
>> You do not want to have to redefine the area function for every kind of
>> triangle, so by putting the RightTriangle constraints in the type you force
>> unnecessary duplication of generic functions.
>>
>> By putting the constraints in the functions you limit the use of algorithms
>> that rely on the rightness of the triangle where they belong.
>
> Right, I tend to come from the Keykos angle where passing a capability
> to something does not implicitly give you the ability to construct
> other capabilities of that type, and constructors /can/ be wrapped by
> whomever,
> this leads me to think that there can be some subprogram where the
> 'Triangle' type and it's values conform to the RightTriangle
> constraint, but this is not the case if you can take them apart and
> put them back together with other values.
>
> I think it works for the limited scope of functional programming languages
> because functional programming languages tend to shed authority as
> they call functions with only the necessary arguments.

I didn't think functional languages had authority in the first place,
aside from using resources, since there aren't side effects.

> as an example, a function which accepts 2 pairs is going to be fairly rare,
> so you need not worry that they have implicit authority to transform
> the 2 pairs (a1, b1), (a2, b2) into, a1, b1, a2, b2, (a1, b2), and
> (a2, b1)
>
> where most any other types of programming tend to accrue authority...

I thought that although you have to pessimistically assume other
programs accrue authority, most of them actually don't.
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