Application-specific Improvements to the Ecosystem

[bluddy]

@octachron

Modular implicits is neither a pipe dream nor a feature that you should wait for when building new libraries: it is a research project.

So let me just add a little bit to this. A demo was made showing off a prototype of Modular Implicits a few years back, and everyone (including me) got all excited. However, the excitement was premature. Research projects are very hard to predict, and Modular Implicits to the level that @lpw25 describes here are a massive amount of research (and implementation) effort. So while it is indeed ‘a research project’, there are simpler research projects and more ambitious ones, and Modular Implicits is an extremely ambitious project and is therefore unlikely (IMO) to be implemented within any reasonable timeframe. Other projects (such as Algebraic Effects) are hopefully more modest and are plodding along. It’s important for users of the language to understand this in order to set realistic expectations.