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Modular datatypes: introducing Swierstra's paper "Datatypes à la Carte"

9 min • 24 juni 2021

In a really wonderful paper of some few years back, Swierstra introduced the idea of modular datatypes using ideas from universal algebra. Modular datatypes allow one to assemble a bigger datatype from component datatypes, and combine functions written on the component datatypes in a modular way. In this episode I introduce the paper and the problem (dubbed the expression problem by Phil Wadler) it is trying to solve. Modular datatypes are a different form of modularity that I would like to consider in the context of the discussion of module systems we have been engaged in now for a while in Chapter 13 of the podcast.