Caleb Meredith at ReactEurope 2018

Let’s play a game. What’s the biggest difference between type systems for JavaScript and an ML inspired language like OCaml or Haskell? Subtyping! Subtyping allows runtime values of some type to be used as a different type, and how a language designer chooses to address subtyping deeply affects every other design decision in the language. From the way values are represented in the runtime, to how effective type inference algorithms are, to the supported polymorphic code patterns. Implicit runtime subtyping is common in today’s most popular languages like JavaScript, Java, C#, and Ruby but the tradeoffs aren’t well understood. Subtyping is useful, but in today’s programming environment subtyping is overrated.Show more