Re: [Caml-list] Are implicit modules too implicit?

[Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer@gmail.com>]

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The fact that implicits (in Scala or in this proposal) are understood as a
term elaboration problem guarantees that there is a nice user
representation to understand what is happening: just show the elaborated
term. The question of which interface is used to query this representation
is important, but I wouldn't be too worried about it. As Leo said, Merlin
should do it fine.
For compiler messages, given that there is a syntax for explicitly passing
an implicit (foo {Bar}), I would expect passing an obviously-incorrect
implicit (say foo {List}) to print an error message mentioning the correct
elaborated implicit, just as we sometimes use the ( : unit) annotation to
force the compiler to spit out its inferred type.

On Wed, Mar 2, 2016 at 10:57 AM, Malcolm Matalka <mmatalka@gmail.com> wrote:

> Leo White <leo@lpw25.net> writes:
>
>
> >> In the paper, the Show implementation for an int is called Show_int and
> >> for list Show_list, etc.  But this is just a pleasant convention in the
> >> paper.
> >
> > And could easily be a pleasant convention in a library. Or possibly
> [Int.Show]
> > and [List.Show]. It's really a just a question of using sensible
> > library design.
>
> I'm just a bit concerned about relying on convention for such a powerful
> feature.
>
>
> FWIW, I don't use merlin, although maybe I'll start.  One of the
> strengths of Ocaml, IMO, is how much information is local to the
> call-site and implicits seem to allow spooky action at a distance which
> makes me a bit uneasy.
>
> Perhaps I'm overreacting.
>
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