[racket] Making a contract between a function and "the world in general"

On Oct 8, 2011, at 12:48 PM, Neil Toronto wrote:

> On 10/08/2011 10:12 AM, Matthias Felleisen wrote:
>> 
>> (1) I do not understand Neil's problem. Say I have module A and
>> want to protect its exports from abuses by clients, say module B,
>> why do you use define/contract at all? The define/contract form
>> is for splitting modules into module-lets -- in case your module
>> is too large and you can't manage invariants in your head.
> 
> Which now I see that you can *infer* from the docs, if you already sort of know this. They're kinda jagony. But now I understand, so thank you.
> 
> The thing is, define/contract has a huge advantage that contract-out doesn't have: it puts all the invariants at the function definition, right before the code that relies on them. I suppose I could get the same effect with a contract-out right before the function definition (or write a define/provide macro). But I think the style guidelines say this is bad, and I don't like scattering provides throughout code.


The docs seem to need a guide, a revision of the FAQ that I started with Robby a long time ago. Perhaps I can find time next semester. 


> 
>> If you
>> believe that this is true for even small modules, I urge you to
>> use Typed Racket. That's the better solution and real soon now
>> TR will allow you to add contracts on top of types at provides.
> 
> I would love to, if not for all the keyword arguments. :( That is seriously the only thing keeping me from making PLoT into a typed library.


Aha. Sam will be working on this :-)