[plt-dev] overriding constructor style printing

On Mar 3, 2009, at 5:17 PM, Felix Klock's PLT scheme proxy wrote:

>   In general, the designer of an abstract data type wants to only  
> provide an abstract view of that type.


Late to the game and it's a philosophical answer, too.

Over years of Scheme programming I came to the conclusion that this  
desire is ideologically misguided for a language without types.

Types -- in Reynolds's words -- are enforcing syntactic barriers of  
abstraction. In a world of types, it is therefore natural to wish to  
present an _abstract type_ as something the client side cannot see.  
(How about the server side, btw?) Because the barrier is only  
syntactic, a concrete view of the elements of an abstract type would  
actually allow us to fake them at run-time. (Example: abstype t  
= ... : if I print these things concretely as 1 2 3 I can use a 1 or  
a 2 as t and float it from a (badly typed part of the system) into  
the abstype region and possibly destroy invariants.)

Untyped languages don't support abstract types. They support dynamic  
protection of invariants (see Robby and Wadler's and Jacob's paper).  
So it's perfectly okay to show clients how a bag is represented: as  
(make-bag (list (list 'a 2) (list 'b 1))) or (make-bag (list 'a 'a  
'b)). They can't fake it because bag is generative.

In short you have fallen prey to the ideological preaching of Typed  
people.

Of course, I realize that you wish to make a point to your students  
so I also understand why having an appropriate print style around is  
useful. You are turning the "TeachScheme" language into something  
students might encounter once they move into types.

-- Matthias