The Signs of Soundness

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Paul Phillips

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Jan 13, 2013, 2:57:04 PM1/13/13
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Hello scala, my old friend
I've come to take you home again
Because a feature slowly creeping
left me plagued with doubts and weeping
and the version that was tagged in the repo
just has to go
it lacks the signs of soundness

On sleepness nights I hacked alone
applying ant and other tools of stone
A futile tour of every open bug
once done in weeks, now I can only shrug
when my brain was melted by a blast of complexity
which needn't be
I lost all signs of soundness

And in the bug tracker I saw
ten thousand tickets, maybe more
Abstract types, improper variance
Skolems escaping through a porous fence
People writing type lambdas which no one understands
and no one planned
to check for signs of soundness

"Friends," said I, "You do not know
Unsoundness like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my code that I might reach you"
But in unpublished branches it lay
still does today
awaiting signs of soundness

To scalac they'd plead and pray
it had to get faster some day
Yet scala's future it has itself seen
Warnings unheeded thanks to SIP-18
And the log says
"The words of the prophets were written in old tickets
and closed wontfix"
We search for signs of soundness

virtualeyes

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Jan 13, 2013, 3:23:12 PM1/13/13
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Ok, well, I'll play ice breaker as there should be some community followup here.

Scala 2.10 has been launched, and now...what, should we have faith in it?

Feel like I've just read Frost's, Snowy Evening, with a Scala twist.

Paul Phillips

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Jan 13, 2013, 3:26:07 PM1/13/13
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On Sun, Jan 13, 2013 at 12:23 PM, virtualeyes <sit...@gmail.com> wrote:
Scala 2.10 has been launched, and now...what, should we have faith in it?

Any resemblance to any programming languages, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Robert Kirkpatrick

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Jan 13, 2013, 7:22:00 PM1/13/13
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While Scala and Shakespeare meet Verlaine..

.. type lamdas don't make alexandrines.

Good luck.

Erik Post

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Jan 14, 2013, 10:54:58 AM1/14/13
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Is there any place one may vote for having this performed live at, say, ScalaDays 2013? They'd have to be held in Central Park, of course. I'm willing to sing the high parts, if need be.

G J

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Jan 14, 2013, 2:00:23 PM1/14/13
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I'm very  impressed!!
   Paul Phillips - hacker by day, and song writer by night...
or, the other way round...;-)

Best Regards.


On Sunday, January 13, 2013 2:57:04 PM UTC-5, Paul Phillips wrote:

Nicholas Sterling

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Jan 15, 2013, 10:30:31 AM1/15/13
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Brilliant!  I just hope this isn't a warmup to "Fifty Ways to Leave your Employer".

Nicholas

Meredith Gregory

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Jan 15, 2013, 12:50:17 PM1/15/13
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Dear Nicholas,

Or a capitulation to Haskell's evaluation order: Still Lazy After All These Years.

Best wishes,

--greg
--
L.G. Meredith
Managing Partner
Biosimilarity LLC
7329 39th Ave SW

dino...@gmail.com

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Jan 15, 2013, 2:03:36 PM1/15/13
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I'm eagerly waiting for "The Unboxer".

D.

Som Snytt

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Jan 15, 2013, 2:19:27 PM1/15/13
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+2 or 3

You guys are good.

I was thinking "One-Trick Pony", or "One-Trick Punning."

BTW, the theme for Kotlin and Ceylon is, "I am a rock, I am an island."  But I don't want to start a language flame war.
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