On 22 Dec 2011, at 06:25, Alexander Solla wrote: > Denotational semantics is unrealistic.
And so are imaginary numbers. But they are damn useful for electrical circuits calculations, so who cares? > The /defining/ feature of a bottom is that it doesn't have an interpretation. What do you mean by "interpretation"? > They should all be treated alike, and be treated differently from every other > Haskell value. But they ARE very similar to other values. They can be members of otherwise meaningful structures, and you can do calculations with these structures. "fst (1, _|_)" is a good and meaningful calculation. > Every other Haskell value /does/ have an interpretation. So, (_|_) is bad, but (1, _|_) is good? You know, my scientific advisor used to say "math is about calling different things by the same name; philosophy is about calling the same thing by different names". It seems to me that philosophy is something you're doing now, whereas programming is all about math. > I happen to only write Haskell programs that terminate. Sure, but if you've ever used recursion, then you do have bottoms in your program. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
