41–50 of 197 posts
I am deeply impressed by the depth and breadth of this language. Algebraic data types, logic programming, mutability, all there from the get go. Another aspect that I love from their comparison table is that a single executable is both the package manager, LSP and the compiler. As I understand, the language server for Haskell has/had to do a lot of dances and re implement things from ghc as a dance between the partic…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
FP isn't really about eliminating side effects. Controlled effects are fine. That's what an effect system does. Avoiding side effects is really just a side effect (pun intended) of older programming language technology that didn't provide any other way to control effects.
Arguably FP really is about eliminating side effects. The research has sprung out of lambda calculus where a computation is defined in terms of functions (remember: Functional programming). Side effects can only be realized by exposing them in the runtime / std-lib etc. How one does that is a value judgement, but if a term is not idempotent, then you arguably does not have a functional programming language anymore.
I looked and Flix a while ago and found it really interesting - so much so that I wrote an article "Flix for Java Programmers" about it. Might actually be a bit outdated by now.. need to look at Flix's recent development again. But if you're interested: https://www.reactivesystems.eu/2022/06/24/flix-for-java-prog...
The language has improved a lot in the years since the post. In particular, the effect system has been significantly extended, Java interoperability is much improved, and some syntax have been updated.
Awesome, it even supports HKTs. Can't find any mentions of typeclasses though, are they supported? Give me typeclasses and macros comparable with Scala ones and I would be happy to port my libraries (distage, izumi-reflect, BIO) to Flix and consider moving to it from Scala :3 UPD: ah, alright, they call typeclasses traits. What about macros? UPD2: ergh, they don't support nominal inheritance even in the most harmless…
Flix supports type classes (called "traits") with higher-kinded types (HKTs) and with associated types and associated effects. A Flix trait can provide a default implementation of a function, but specific trait instances can override that implementation. However, Flix has no inheritance. The upshot is that traits are a compile-time construct that is fully eliminated through monomorphization. Consequently, traits incu…
Anyone have a good primer on what effect-oriented programming looks like and how it’s used? Feel free to shill your own blog!
It looks like "effect" as in impure functions in a functional language? I.e. a new way of dealing with effects (global/hidden state mutations) in a language that makes the pure-impure distinction. I'm not entirely sure. I thought it was going to be something like contracts or dependent types or something.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flix supports type classes (called "traits") with higher-kinded types (HKTs) and with associated types and associated effects. A Flix trait can provide a default implementation of a function, but specific trait instances can override that implementation. However, Flix has no inheritance. The upshot is that traits are a compile-time construct that is fully eliminated through monomorphization. Consequently, traits incu…
Sorry to hijack, but since you are involved, can you explain why tail call optimization would incur a run time perf penalty, as the docs mention? I would expect tail call optimization to be a job for the compiler, not for the runtime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It looks like "effect" as in impure functions in a functional language? I.e. a new way of dealing with effects (global/hidden state mutations) in a language that makes the pure-impure distinction. I'm not entirely sure. I thought it was going to be something like contracts or dependent types or something.
No. It is essentially resumable exceptions. You throw an exception saying “I need a MyAlgebraicType” and the effect handler catches the exception, generates the value, and returns execution to the place the exception was called from.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Flix supports type classes (called "traits") with higher-kinded types (HKTs) and with associated types and associated effects. A Flix trait can provide a default implementation of a function, but specific trait instances can override that implementation. However, Flix has no inheritance. The upshot is that traits are a compile-time construct that is fully eliminated through monomorphization. Consequently, traits incu…
Sorry to hijack, but since you are involved, can you explain why tail call optimization would incur a run time perf penalty, as the docs mention? I would expect tail call optimization to be a job for the compiler, not for the runtime.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to hijack, but since you are involved, can you explain why tail call optimization would incur a run time perf penalty, as the docs mention? I would expect tail call optimization to be a job for the compiler, not for the runtime.
TCO (tail call optimization) is often confused with TCE (tail call elimination), the latter is a runtime guarantee whereas the former is a compiler's best effort attempt to statically optimize tail calls.
I am trying to think of a situation where a functional language compiler does not have enough information at compile time, especially when effects are witnessed by types.
Awesome, it even supports HKTs. Can't find any mentions of typeclasses though, are they supported? Give me typeclasses and macros comparable with Scala ones and I would be happy to port my libraries (distage, izumi-reflect, BIO) to Flix and consider moving to it from Scala :3 UPD: ah, alright, they call typeclasses traits. What about macros? UPD2: ergh, they don't support nominal inheritance even in the most harmless…
Flix supports type classes (called "traits") with higher-kinded types (HKTs) and with associated types and associated effects. A Flix trait can provide a default implementation of a function, but specific trait instances can override that implementation. However, Flix has no inheritance. The upshot is that traits are a compile-time construct that is fully eliminated through monomorphization. Consequently, traits incu…
So, apparently, I can't re-implement distage for Flix.
I don't mind a little bit of overhead in exchange for a massive productivity boost. I don't even need full nominal inheritance, just literally one level of interface inheritance with dynamic dispatching :(
> their real (or perceived) (ab)use in other programming languages.
Without macros I can't re-implement things like logstage (effortless structured logging extracting context from AST) and izumi-reflect (compile-time refleciton with tiny runtime scala typer simulator).