[Haskell-cafe] Re: practicality of typeful programming

[oleg at pobox.com]

Daniil Elovkov wrote:
> I've recently asked some questions here about some little type hackery
> implementing an embedded dsl. But now I wonder if it's worth the
> effort at all...

Yes it is. Typed embedded DSL are quite useful and widely used. For
example, Lava (high-level hardware description language) uses phantom
types to prevent the designer from building meaningless circuits
(e.g., connecting a Bool and an Int wires).
	http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/69503.html

There are other such hardware design languages which profitably use
types (which ought to be popularized more). Using types can decrease
the amount of error checking in the implementation.

	I highly recommend the following _very_ good thesis on this
topic:
	Morten Rhiger
	Higher-Order Program Generation
	http://www.brics.dk/DS/01/4/index.html