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by jprete 694 days ago
Do you happen to have a link to an example or explanation?
3 comments

The keyword to search for is algebraic data types, which are common in functional languages, but for instance Rust also has them.

Here is an example comparing C# with F#, where the latter also algebraic data types: https://blog.ploeh.dk/2016/11/28/easy-domain-modelling-with-...

The syntax has improved quite substantially since 2016 for pattern matching at C#'s end, and it's very easy to model ADTs with records (and the experience of using them even before that was decent with methods accepting lambdas).

Today, you write it in a similar way you would write a match in Rust.

How do you represent sum types in C# today? Can enum members hold records as data, or do you do it differently?
Domain Modeling Made Functional [0] by Scott Wlaschin

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2JB1_e5wZmU

The other commenter is not technically wrong to point at “algebraic data types”, but I don’t think that answer is helpful at all. It’s like saying the answer to data modelling is tuples.

I would instead recommend searching for “functional programming and domain driven design”.