From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id NAA07296; Mon, 11 Jun 2001 13:12:29 +0200 (MET DST) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: (from weis@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id NAA07212 for caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr; Mon, 11 Jun 2001 13:12:28 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id CAA00638 for ; Sat, 9 Jun 2001 02:38:19 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from imap.cs.caltech.edu (imap.cs.caltech.edu [131.215.44.17]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id f590cIn29238 for ; Sat, 9 Jun 2001 02:38:18 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from [63.198.73.142] (account kiniry HELO kind) by imap.cs.caltech.edu (CommuniGate Pro SMTP 3.4.6) with ESMTP id 937587; Fri, 08 Jun 2001 17:35:39 -0700 Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 17:41:37 -0700 From: "Joseph R. Kiniry" Reply-To: "Joseph R. Kiniry" To: leary@nwlink.com cc: caml-list@inria.fr Subject: [Caml-list] Re: Hitchhiker's Guide to Typing Message-ID: <84460000.992047297@kind> In-Reply-To: <20010608163211.B15375@jean> X-Mailer: Mulberry/2.0.8 (Linux/x86) Organization: Department of Computer Science, Caltech X-Image-Url: http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~kiniry/graphics/jrk-8.99.jpg X-Url: http://www.cs.caltech.edu/~kiniry/ X-Face: 9X:!41!x9hOT+cJU.gb=hXxEm6v)ZczE-':_8mlM-7^G!j%2$QC00w?G "x_1ZnY3[!+gGQD.6%=0EMBt[m|kdKsr*m=3J&r(#is5]J>&eVWNy-h^DrtO_5jES gK6NFKoj%c=+E?*%+\S$Rn7Y|mT(a~1Y{[$MZR[8~(bK[P4]RM2E<"5:n|2Gm!V

7aWw 9+K|b{`Ou,uYaNn(`QDDR On Fri, Jun 08, 2001 at 01:22:05PM -0700, Hao-yang Wang wrote: >> I think by "type theory" you mean the type systems used in modern >> programming languages. Luca Cardelli has written some nice >> tutorial/survey on this topic. >> >> See . Look for the >> articles "Typeful programming" and "Type systems". > > Excellent resources (particularly the "Typeful" doc). My thanks to you. > :) > > Seems to beg the questions tho': Is it not possible to learn and use OCaml > without wading through 60 page docs on typing? Will I have to read more > of these papers to learn the object system? Modules? > > I'm willing to read up on typing, since it seems pretty important to > getting a good handle on FPLs/OCaml, and that's definitely what I'm after, > but I wonder (in advance) if 60 pages can't be turned into far fewer. I'd > like some feedback on the notion that "if you can't explain it to a > five-year-old, you don't really understand it" (or, rather, haven't given > the simplest, most concise, most practically useful explanation). By way > of a couple examples, the HHGTTG entry for Earth is "mostly harmless". > Investing can be distilled down to "buy low, sell high". Not crashing a > motorcycle is a matter of "look where you want to go, don't look at the > ground". No discussion of gyroscopic effects and psychology. Of course, > a working knowledge of typing will never be so simple, but contrast, for > example, the "Type Systems" doc above; Table 34 is a good place to look. > This is not what 99.99% of people looking to understand typing in OCaml > are going to want. If I didn't have a burning desire to learn OCaml/ML, > and someone gave me just this document (and thanks for including the other > one!) as a way of explaining the typing lingo, I'd give up and go back to > what I was doing before, assuming that OCaml was every bit as obscure, > difficult, and unrewarding as Unlambda: > > http://www.eleves.ens.fr:8080/home/madore/programs/unlambda/ ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr