closures after all?

[Reinier Zwitserloot]

Answer inline.

On Sat, Nov 21, 2009 at 6:24 AM, Tim Peierls <tim at peierls.net> wrote:
[in response to Neal's argument that writing libraries is hard already]


> The addition of function types would raise the threshold of expertise
> required to do a good job, making that small percentage even smaller.
>
>

I'm not sure that argument actually works in practice. One of the skills
needed when writing libraries is making sure that the library tries to make
the job that HAS to be done by the user of the library as easy as possible.
Sometimes this requires some _very_ creative design, such as coming up with
something like the builder pattern. Having the ability to use function types
may actually alleviate the need to come up with, say, the 80 hook interfaces
that ParallelArrays defines, making the job easier instead of harder.