<br> <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:02 AM, Matthias Felleisen <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:matthias@ccs.neu.edu" target="_blank">matthias@ccs.neu.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"> <div style="WORD-WRAP: break-word"> <div><br></div> <div>RealWorldHaskell is probably good at explaining how to use the language to count sheep. </div> <div>Your quotes suggest that these people haven't studied PL. </div></div></blockquote></div><br> <div class="gmail_quote">On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 5:17 AM, Shriram Krishnamurthi <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sk@cs.brown.edu" target="_blank">sk@cs.brown.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>So these authors wandered into territory they didn't need to (this is,<br>after all, Real World Haskell, not Definitional Haskell), tried to<br> sound academic, and made asses of themselves.</blockquote> <blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="PADDING-LEFT: 1ex; MARGIN: 0px 0px 0px 0.8ex; BORDER-LEFT: #ccc 1px solid"><br>If your goal was to discredit the book on this topic, you provided a<br>fine excerpt</blockquote> <div> </div> <div>Thanks Matthias and Shriram. </div> <div> </div> <div>While I wasn't intending to discredit the book on this topic (I just happen to cross those passages while this thread is going on), I did suspect the excerpts won't hold up here ;) </div> <div> </div> <div>However, the excerpts (and what Marek said earlier) match well with what developers in industry thought of type systems. </div> <div> </div> <div>Many developeres in the industry (myself included) only have limited understsanding about types (and mostly from such books), and such definitions generally has enough content so most can perform daily tasks without having to dwell further. And they probably will never dig up all the research materials and texts to learn more, except to google the infallible Wikipedia or ask their cubicle neighbors, then the myth perpectuates. </div> <div> </div> <div>IMO it would be nice to have some "correct" and hopefully intuitive sound bytes on types that can be given to such developers to help re-steer the trend. They might never formally study PL, but at least they can have better understandings. Something like a Type System 101 perhaps. And maybe that will strike their fancy to learn more. </div> <div> </div> <div>Just my 2 cents. Cheers,</div> <div>yc</div> <div> </div> <div> </div></div>