Andrei Alexandrescu:
For those who wouldn't know how to search the Net, these indeed
are quite appropriate.
People are often a bit lazy in clicking on links present in
newsgroup messages, and they are even more lazy in searching
things. So I've seen numerous times that if you give them links
they will be more willing to read. This is especially true about
topics they know nothing about, because they have a higher
"cognitive impedance".
Google gives many results about this topic, but not all of them
are good. That link from mozilla is a little video that doesn't
tell a lot. The papers from Wadler were the ones Haskell
typeclases come from, they are harder, but they are more
fundamental. But starting from those papers is hard, so better to
start from some examples and simpler explanations.
In the Haskell wiki there are more practical texts on this topic,
and comparisons:
http://www.haskell.org/tutorial/classes.html
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/OOP_vs_type_classes
Plus an online free chapter of what maybe is the best book about
Haskell:
http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/using-typeclasses.html
It's a matter of what priorities the language has and what
other features are available overlapping with the projected
usefulness.
I agree. On the other hand the main point of this thread is that
someone perceives as not good enough or not sufficient the
current features of D. Even if their perception is wrong (and you
are an expert on this field, so we trust your words), I think the
topic is worth discussing.
Bye,
bearophile
