- Mar 2022
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www.monasticacademy.com www.monasticacademy.com
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You ask a question that the human mind can't figure out, and because of that, you're put in a position where you're forced to Awaken to a mind greater than the one that you're currently identifying with.
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- Aug 2020
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toraritte.github.io toraritte.github.io
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Original post is here.
This explanation should be combined with 24 Days of GHC Extensions: Rank N Types (see related hypothes.is note).
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ocharles.org.uk ocharles.org.uk
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Commonly the above definition is called the identity function. But in fact we should think of it as a whole family of functions. We should really say that id is an identity function for all types a. In other words, for every type T you might come up with, there is an identity function called id, which is of type T -> T. This is the type-checker’s view anyway, and by turning on the RankNTypes extension we can be explicit about that in our code: {-# LANGUAGE RankNTypes #-} id :: forall a. a -> a id x = x
This is such a nice description of
forall. It should be combined withforallis the type-level "lambda" (also saved it here). -
Now it is much clearer that id is really a family of infinitely many functions. It is fair to say that it is an abstract function (as opposed to a concrete one), because its type abstracts over the type variable a. The common and proper mathematical wording is that the type is universally quantified (or often just quantified) over a.
This was very neatly put, and
forallabove is also spot on.
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book.purescript.org book.purescript.org
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Quantified Types
My main issue with this book is that the difficulty is exponentially increasing, and by "keeping it simple" (i.e., trying to use simple terms) it is even harder to do a proper research.
For example:
1. The name of this chapter
This chapter should have been called Explicitly quantified type or Explicit universal quantification as it is too general as is, and doing a search to get to know more when someone has no formal/previous functional programming background, makes very hard.
Most importantly though, even if Haskell not mentioned, the word "explicit" would have been important.
It is also more about generic parameters than about quantification itself, and
forallis kind of introduced but it is totally misleading.2.
forallThe post “forall” is the type-level “lambda” (saved) is the best, most succinct explanation of
forallthat I ever found. Unfortunately not before going down the rabbit hole.. (See links below.) One still needs to know about- typeclasses
- generic parameters
- constraints
- what pragmas are but after that, it is straightforward.
(Jordan's Reference section on
forallalso doesn't help much.)forallis also mandatory in PureScript (which is also not mentioned when introducing it), and I believe a comparison (the way the above post did) with Haskell is important, but at the right time. At least Jordan's Reference tries to put it off until later, but still before explaining concepts required to understand it.3. The "rabbit hole" links
These are all good resources, but not for uninitiated mortals, and at a lower level (such as where I am now) they raise more questions than answers.
Explicit
forall(r/purescript reddit)](Started here initially, but the single sentence there prompted a search for scoped type variables and rank-n types (or Rank N types).)
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