[swift-evolution] generic associatedtype?

[Jens Persson]

Ok, thanks! I take it that we should not expect any dramatic advances of
Swift's type system any time soon.

Reason for asking is that we are trying to write an API for N-dimensional
graphics/audio/signal/data processing.

Metal, vDSP, simd, etc. would perhaps be used, but only behind the scenes,
eventually, as necessary, since we want something more uniform and
math-like, thus allowing for a more rapid experimental style of coding,
where you can quickly try something out for a different number of
dimensions, etc.

This has turned out to be impossibly hard to write in current Swift, unless
you are willing to either

1. Forget about performance and type safety, ie use a standard Array
(instead of a static vector with type-level Count as well as Element) for
N-dimensional positions, matrices, vectors, indices, etc.

2. Forget about code reuse / abstractions.

Option 1 is not an alternative. We want to let the compiler (and our code)
know/optimize as much as possible, otherwise it will be unusably slow even
for ("rapid") prototyping.

So we'll probably go with option 2 and spell out / generate code for each
and every permutation of
(dim, data-structure, function/algorithm), and sadly this will also be
necessary for every piece of code that uses the API, since it is impossible
to write eg

A generic StaticVector type with type parameters for its Count and Element.

A generic N-dimensional array type with type parameters for its
(NDim)Index: StaticVector (where Index.Element == Int)
and
Element

Or we'll have to use (Obj) C++ : /

/Jens



On Mon, Sep 19, 2016 at 3:22 AM, Robert Widmann <devteam.codafi at gmail.com>
wrote:

>
> On Sep 17, 2016, at 6:37 PM, Jens Persson via swift-evolution <
> swift-evolution at swift.org> wrote:
>
> Has there been any discussions about the possibility of having generic
> associatedtypes?
>
> I (naively) think that it would open up a lot of possibilities.
> Because if, for example, we could do this:
>
> protocol CountType {
>     associatedtype Storage<E>
>     ...
> }
>
> Then we could do this:
>
> struct Count1 : CountType {
>     typealias Storage<E> = (E)
>     ...
> }
> struct Count2 : CountType {
>     typealias Storage<E> = (E, E)
>     ...
> }
> struct Count3 : CountType {
>     typealias Storage<E> = (E, E, E)
>     ...
> }
> ...
> protocol StaticArrayType {
>     associatedtype Count: CountType
>     associatedtype Element
>     ...
> }
> struct StaticArray<C: CountType, Element> : StaticArrayType {
>     typealias Count = C
>     var storage: C.Storage<Element>
>     ...
> }
>
>
>
> Would adding support for generic associatedtypes be possible? Are there
> any plans for it?
>
>
> Possible, yes, plans, no.
>
> Generic associated types go part and parcel with higher-kinded
> quantification and higher-kinded types, the implementation challenges of
> which have been discussed thoroughly on this list and elsewhere.  Is there
> a particular flavor you had in mind?
>
> One major problem is that presumably you’d want to constrain such a
> generic associatedtype and then we’d have to have some kind of
> type-level-yet-runtime-relevant apply of a generic witness table to
> another potentially generic witness.  It’s not clear what that kind of
> thing would look like, or how far it would have to be taken to get the kind
> of support you would expect from a basic implementation higher
> associatedtypes.  Implementations in languages like Haskell tend to also be
> horrendously inefficient - I believe Edward Kmett calls is the “Mother May
> I” effect of forcing a witness table to indirect through multiple layers of
> the witness because inlining necessarily fails for the majority of these
> things in the MTL.
>
> tl;dr Basic examples like the ones you cite hide the kinds of tremendously
> evil fun things you can do once you have these kinds of features.
>
>
> (
> I tried searching for it but I found only this:
> https://lists.swift.org/pipermail/swift-evolution/
> Week-of-Mon-20160411/015089.html
> )
>
> Thanks,
> /Jens
>
> _______________________________________________
> swift-evolution mailing list
> swift-evolution at swift.org
> https://lists.swift.org/mailman/listinfo/swift-evolution
>
>
>
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