[swift-evolution] Swift Generics: connection between equality constraints on generic parameters and GADTs

[Douglas Gregor]

> On Aug 2, 2016, at 9:36 AM, Gabriel Scherer <gabriel.scherer at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm not familiar with Swift, but happened to find the Generics
> Manifesto document at
>  https://github.com/apple/swift/blob/master/docs/GenericsManifesto.md
> 
> I wonder if the Swift community is aware of the strong connection
> between equalities on generic type parameters of the form "where T ==
> Foo" in method or extension declarations, and the Generalized
> Algebraic Datatypes (GADTs) of the functional programming community.
> To my knowledge, this relation has first been established in the 2006
> article "Generalized Algebraic Data Types and Object-Oriented
> Programming", by Andrew Kennedy and Claudio Russo, that contain
> examples that you might find interesting:
>  https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publication/generalized-algebraic-data-types-and-object-oriented-programming/
> 
> There has been a lot of work on GADTs and their expressiveness in the
> functional programming community, and I think that realizing the
> connection could be helpful for some further generics language design.


There are some in the Swift community that have a deep interest in and understanding of type theory. However, as a general rule, we try to keep the Swift language—and discussions of its evolution—accessible to everyone. One should not need to have a copy of TAPL on their desk to participate in the discussions here, and if an idea isn’t presented in the context of how it can improve Swift directly (with specific motivating code examples written in Swift), it’s really not relevant to the discussion.

	- Doug