Comment by akkad33

1 month ago

Why does it need generics? There's a great blog post about how you can replace a lot of trait behaviour with just functions. Maybe something like that can be done for generics

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akkad33

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riffraff  1 month ago

the comment is wrong, what Gleam lacks is interfaces.

Which feels super strange, but doesn't seem to really be a problem, e.g. imagine a language where you'd write

    fun sum_all_numbers(Iterable<T> it) { it.fold(...) } # an interface
    sum_all_numbers(a_list) # a list implements iterable

Gleam wants you to write

    fun sum_all_numbers(Iterator<T> it) { it.fold(...) } # a concrete type
    sum_all_numbers(a_list.iterator) # get the caller to build the right object

edit: found an article that explained this a bit better https://mckayla.blog/posts/all-you-need-is-data-and-function...

  • akkad33  1 month ago

    Yes this is the article I was referring to. Gleam does not need interfaces or traits because functions can do it