On 09/03/07, skaller <skaller@users.sourceforge.net> wrote:
BOTH Ocaml functors and overloading are just hacks to
work around the lack of ability to properly express
higher order natural transformations.
Hm... indeed, but for some operations, you cannot provide a single, general definition - say for length operation, or for * (* is very different when it comes to scalars, vectors and matrices - not even the same axioms hold). I believe that the basic operations should be implemented using overloading (actually, some smart overloading that would allow both static and (seemingly) dynamic resolving) and then polyadic operations be built on top of that.
For systems like Ocaml, you need a mix of sloppiness
and heavy typing, because unless you're implementing
a well understood mathematical formalism, too much
formality and abstraction just gets in the way.
For example if you were implementing a C++ compiler in Ocaml
I'm going to bet you'd want plenty of space to fiddle with
your representations and concepts, because you don't quite
know what it is you're actually implementing.