The philosophy of Nothing

[Neal Gafter]

On Sun, Nov 29, 2009 at 12:33 PM, Paul Benedict <pbenedict at apache.org>wrote:

> Yes, I do have it flipped around. Thank you. I shouldn't enjoy making
> big blunders in public so much. :-)
>
> So let me ask the opposite:
> How can nothing be a type of something?
>

A type T is a *subtype *of a type S iff all of the elements of the type T
are elements of the type S.

For example, String is a subtype of Object because all of the elements of
the type String are elements of the type Object.

There are no elements of the type Nothing.  Therefore all of the elements of
the type Nothing are elements of the type T, for every T.  Therefore Nothing
is a subtype of the type T, for every T.

Cheers,
Neal
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