[eddythompson80]

> Personally, I find the idea that a compiler might be able to reach outside itself completely terrifying (Access the network or a database? Are you nuts?).

Why though? F# has this feature called TypeProviders where you can emit types to the compiler. For example, you can do do:

   type DbSchema = PostgresTypeProvider<"postgresql://postgres:...">
   type WikipediaArticle = WikipediaTypeProvider<"https://wikipedia.org/wiki/Hello">

and now you have a type that references that Article or that DB. You can treat it as if you had manually written all those types. You can fully inspect it in the IDE, debugger or logger. It's a full type that's autogenerated in a temp directory.

When I first saw it, I thought it was really strange. Then thought about it abit, played with it, and thought it was brilliant. Literally one of the smartest ideas ever. It's first class codegen framework. There were some limitations, but still.

After using it in a real project, you figure out why it didn't catch on. It's so close, but it's missing something. Just one thing is out of place there. The interaction is painful for anything that's not a file source, like CsvTypeProvider or a public internet url. It does also create this odd dependenciey that your code has that can't be source controlled or reproduced. There were hacks and workarounds, but nothing felt right for me.

It was however, the best attempt at a statically typed language trying to imitate python or javascript scripting syntax. Where you just say put a db uri, and you start assuming types.