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A nice thread discussing how ‘theoretical’ properties of type systems have real-world, practical impacts on the usability of programming languages. This is not always obvious when trying to understand academic work on type systems:

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Varun

@typesanitizer

· Nov 27, 2021

Feel like there's this unfortunate problem where nice properties of type systems are sometimes dismissed as being academic, whereas the actual problem is that ~most people aren't connecting the dots when they hit a problem in practice because their type system lacks said property

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Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

These usability concerns are often covered in earlier papers, discussed in classes and conveyed in-person (eg. between advisors and students), but it's often harder to make these connections outside of academic circles.

3:41 AM · Nov 28, 2021Twitter Web App

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I find sometimes they are covered in PhD theses, in recorded conference presentations, lecture notes, and can come up in twitter discussions. But this still takes quite a bit of dedication, and so I understand why sometimes it's hard to understand why PL research is important.