From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id MAA28240; Fri, 3 May 2002 12:17:24 +0200 (MET DST) Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id MAA28249 for caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr; Fri, 3 May 2002 12:17:23 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id DAA20677 for ; Fri, 3 May 2002 03:36:53 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from obento.cs.caltech.edu (obento.cs.caltech.edu [131.215.44.101]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.11.1) with ESMTP id g431aqD19849 for ; Fri, 3 May 2002 03:36:52 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from orchestra.cs.caltech.edu (orchestra.cs.caltech.edu [131.215.44.20]) by obento.cs.caltech.edu (Postfix) with ESMTP id 63BDC4050; Thu, 2 May 2002 18:36:50 -0700 (PDT) Received: (from mvanier@localhost) by orchestra.cs.caltech.edu (8.11.2/8.9.3) id g431ao611142; Thu, 2 May 2002 18:36:50 -0700 Date: Thu, 2 May 2002 18:36:50 -0700 Message-Id: <200205030136.g431ao611142@orchestra.cs.caltech.edu> X-Authentication-Warning: orchestra.cs.caltech.edu: mvanier set sender to mvanier@cs.caltech.edu using -f From: Michael Vanier To: checker@d6.com Cc: caml-list@inria.fr In-reply-to: <4.3.2.7.2.20020502173934.03b73250@mail.d6.com> (message from Chris Hecker on Thu, 02 May 2002 17:49:25 -0700) Subject: Re: [Caml-list] "high end" type theory for working programmers? References: <4.3.2.7.2.20020502173934.03b73250@mail.d6.com> Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk I highly recommend Benjamin Pierce's new book "Types in Programming Languages" from MIT press. It's very well-written, covers much of the material you describe, and includes implementations in ocaml ;-) Mike > Date: Thu, 02 May 2002 17:49:25 -0700 > From: Chris Hecker > > The list has had a lot of discussions about type theory behind the module > system, tuples, and the like lately. Most of it has been over my head, > which is fun, because it presents a challenge to try to figure out what > people are saying. I am wondering how much of it is useful for actually > writing "regular" code (as opposed to compilers or theorem provers). Are > there books (or survey papers) on this stuff that are meant to educate > working programmers, as opposed to language researchers? For example, > where should I go to learn what this means, and whether I care (just a > randomly chosen sentence representative of stuff that's currently over my > head from the past few days on the list): > > "That functor is essentially the polymorphic identity functor, while the > other variation was a polymorphic eta-expansion of the abstraction operator." > > or another example: > > "In this encoding, modules are only records, so module types are ordinary > types, and there is no distinction between ordinary abstract types > (introduced by explicit polymorphic abstraction) and ``abstract > signatures''. There is, as far as I can tell, no need for kind polymorphism." > > I started using caml to find out if a "higher level" language could make a > difference in my programming productivity (writing video games). As I > continue with that experiment, I'm curious to know whether understanding > this high end type theory stuff would help make me a better programmer, or > just more able to understand the list lately. Either is fine, but both > would obviously be great. :) > > Chris > ------------------- To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ Beginner's list: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ocaml_beginners