Whither MrFlow?

[Lauri Alanko <la@iki.fi>]

Hello.

I gathered that MrSpidey will be replaced by a "MrFlow" in v200. Could
someone knowledgeable about these things summarize their differences? In
particular I'm interested in whether it will be possible to use the
type-checker with MzScheme. I'm somewhat loath to use graphical gimmicks
in programming. Wouldn't the new module and syntax system allow for a
special language, modules written in which would then get their type
assertions checked?

Also, from the very little experimenting that I've done with MrSpidey, I
get the impression that the types are inferred "top-down", so to say,
where each function's inferred type depends on the types of the
arguments that it is given at its call sites. Though this is
understandable, given that the original purpose of the system is to find
out where primitive functions need their arguments checked, I find this
a bit confusing, being used to traditional Hindley-Milner style
inference that finds principal types.

For example, this checks without a glitch:

(define (foo x) x)
(: foo (x -> x))

But when I add

(define x (foo 1))

then the type assertion no longer passes. Why? Am I completely misguided
in trying to use type assertions like I would use type annotations in ML
or Haskell?


Lauri Alanko
la@iki.fi