Exhaustive compile time checking of dispatch statements is a wonderful thing, sorely missing from the languages that decided "sum types" are a bit weird and niche.
They make it near impossible to extend from the outside.
I can pass a Reader interface to your function, but I cannot (easily) add a
> | UnusualProtocol(Socket)
as a third party consumer.
Other than that, sum types are the better abstraction. With exhaustive first class pattern matching (eg. with proper matching on destructuring), nothing comes close in terms of ergonomics.
Exhaustive compile time checking of dispatch statements is a wonderful thing, sorely missing from the languages that decided "sum types" are a bit weird and niche.
They make it near impossible to extend from the outside.
I can pass a Reader interface to your function, but I cannot (easily) add a
> | UnusualProtocol(Socket)
as a third party consumer.
Other than that, sum types are the better abstraction. With exhaustive first class pattern matching (eg. with proper matching on destructuring), nothing comes close in terms of ergonomics.
OCaml has extensible sum types. They work very nicely for some ranges of problems.
That is a feature. Compose instead of extending.
Tbh, missing those checks in other languages bugs me so much - it's like why leave me hanging?
Elm <-> Rust
Best buds on this front