overloading is overrated, laws aren't twitter.com/mxavier/status
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By the way is there any reason you couldn't attach laws to just like, a record of functions? Why are classes special?
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You're on to something very fundamental about type classes ;-)
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What is it?
(Not sure if I should be thinking in the direction of "they're actually not special" or "they're more special than I think!")
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Type classes are just a fancy, built-in way of passing records of functions around implicitly. Alas, they live in a separate language space.
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I'm guessing you are already aware of this though 😉
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I mean nothing too profound -- type classes tie "laws" to type-directed implicit arguments in a way that mystifies the two distinct concepts
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Yup. And laws can just be fields on a record/typeclass/module/whatever if you have a more powerful type system.
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Requiring laws is probably a good rule of thumb to avoid overuse, however.