Re: A bit further toward the flamewar

[Ian Price]

Linas Vepstas <address@hidden> writes:

> I have no clue why it never occurred to me to use the above paradigm,
> I will definitely start experimenting with it.
>
> Any clue on how to indicate that func returns type 'X' ?
>
> I don't know if you were trying to make this point but: if one were to
> code in the above paradigm, and also throw some srfi-9000 syntactic
> sugar at it, one might  be able to get something that resembled
> ocaml/haskell type declarations.  And, for the code that I deal with,
> this might be the bees knees.

Just because scheme doesn't have type declarations doesn't mean you
can't add them. I often write code that looks like

; partition : (A -> Boolean) Listof(A) -> Listof(A) Listof(A)
(define (partition pred list) ...)

and I also make heavy use of 'assert', and less frequently, a macro of
mine called 'assert-lambda' which looks like

(lambda ((a procedure?) (b list?)) ...)

I don't, in general, check return types, but I do try and make sure that
they obey the declaration comment. Having a built-in type/contract
syntax, like Racket has, would be nice as I could move these comments
into code, but this is better than nothing.

-- 
Ian Price

"Programming is like pinball. The reward for doing it well is
the opportunity to do it again" - from "The Wizardy Compiled"