[mercury-users] Inaccuracy in language definition ?

[Holger Krug]

> I agree that there are significant drawbacks to our current approach,
> but all the other approaches also seem to have even worse drawbacks.

The most significant drawback of the current approach seems to be,
that the programmer who uses a module interface usually does not know
and in many cases (encapsulation, legal issues) even should not know,
how a type is implemented.

I understand, that deep knowledge of module internals is necessary for
optimization. But I think the separation of public interface and
private implementation is absolutely necessary and should not be
subject to any compromise. (Please do not misunderstand: I, too, love
heavy optimization, but sacrificing encapsulation on behalf of
efficiency seems to contradict heavily with every day programmer's needs.)

Dreaming about the future: How can I ever create a Mercury component
and sell it to customers, if I have to make the source code available
to all of them ?

-- 
Holger Krug
hkrug at rationalizer.com
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