 Poytypism in Practice
started 1/31/2001; 3:52:44 AM - last post 2/9/2001; 4:23:04 AM
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andrew cooke - Poytypism in Practice 
1/31/2001; 3:52:44 AM (reads: 1735, responses: 5)
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While the LtU jury remains out on whether polytypism is useful, here's a paper that seems to actually use it. The first few sections cover old ground (fucntors, categories etc), but then Haskell and Prolog programs are dragged from the maths!
I found this while looking for info on Algebra of Programming.
Before you ask I'm (1) not clear on the details of the paper and (2) not sure how this connects with adding support for polytypic programming into a language (polytypism here seems to mean simply having several data types).
Posted to theory by andrew cooke on 1/31/01; 3:53:28 AM
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andrew cooke - Re: Poytypism in Practice
1/31/2001; 5:44:43 AM (reads: 975, responses: 0)
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OK, it's a little clearer now. By using a polytypic approach the reasoning applies to a variety of data structures - to make the Haskell program it was necessary to specialise to a particular data type.
Presumably a polytypic language would avoid such specialisation.
However, it's still not clear to me what this gains over type classes (or any other way of grouping types together that share common operations).
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Ehud Lamm - Re: Poytypism in Practice
1/31/2001; 7:36:53 AM (reads: 968, responses: 0)
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I have the same problem. It seems like a fancy name for a useful technique which ahs other names (parametric polymorphism).
BTW: A book review on Algebra of Programming would be real nice. It seems very interesting from what I've heard.
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andrew cooke - Re: Poytypism in Practice
1/31/2001; 7:53:33 AM (reads: 986, responses: 0)
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I was looking for a book review - it was praised on c.l.misc yesterday - but couldn't find one. I doubt I'll be buying it unless it comes out in paperback, thought (but I will ask my partner if there's a copy in the University library) - if I do get a copy, I'll post comments.
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andrew cooke - Re: Poytypism in Practice
2/2/2001; 3:49:17 AM (reads: 960, responses: 0)
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OK, looks like Leicester Uni have a copy that I'll be thumbing through this weekend...
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Ehud Lamm - Re: Poytypism in Practice
2/9/2001; 4:23:04 AM (reads: 958, responses: 0)
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It seems some resources related to the book are on the web.
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