[racket-dev] exact nonnegative integers as sequences?

On Mon, Apr 18, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Eli Barzilay <eli at barzilay.org> wrote:
> 9 minutes ago, Matthew Flatt wrote:
>> Thanks for the clarifications, and I now agree that it's not about
>> genericity.
>>
>> I think it's about scripts to programs, though. In a script, not
>> having to type `(in-range ....)' or `(in-list ....)' feels
>> worthwhile. You make a good point that those scriptish shortcuts can
>> make understanding the code a little harder, and using `in-range' or
>> `in-list' can good for long-term maintenance. Still, I think it's
>> better to allow the shortcuts.
>
> Is there any difference between this and other generic operations
> (which could also benefit from types being more explicit and more
> checked)?
>
> [Not intended as a flame -- I'm curious to see if there's something
> makes some generics be worse than others.]

As you probably guessed, I think that this is more of a
coherent-language-design issue, but I bet someone could conduct some
kind of a survey type thing to figure out what leads to more bugs or
what programmers find confusing or something along those lines (ie,
you decide on some concrete measure for "worse" and then conduct a
study to try to answer that question).

Robby