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by wtetzner
3354 days ago
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> First, inheritance provides a strict superset of standard ADT functionality. That's not true. Much of the value of ADTs in OCaml is full type inference. Scala has type inference, but it only sorta-kinda sometimes works. In other words, a lot of the value of OCaml's types are that they are quite flexible, while still having enough restrictions for the compiler to usefully reason about them. |
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I consider using type inference for your interfaces to be a software engineering anti-pattern. (Scala also doesn't really support that, except for return types, but you see related issues if you try type inference with objects in OCaml.) Without explicitly typing your interface, users have to look at the implementation to know what the type of a function is. Type inference for local entities is usually pretty easy.
Most of the remaining problems with type inference in Scala are the result of prioritizing Java interoperability in the type system, leading to a number of contortions and workarounds.