[Grace-core] Grace feedback

[James Noble]

Hi Dan

> * yes, please add me to the lower-traffic "announce list" and inform
> me when significant content goes up on the website, though I suspect
> the latter will be subsumed by the former.

we shall see: we're feeling out way with this.

> * sure, I'd be happy to send Marty a message once there's more content
> up and convince him that this is something he should be interested in.

sounds good!

> * then there's the issue of my integer_set ADT example....

this is interesting - I've been thinking about it since we talked
at SPLASH (now hopefully the rest of us will too)

>  As another example, I'd like the
> language to have a sane way to write an equals method.

so our current plans there is that equals (and hash-code) will be
defined automatically following Henry Baker's EGAL predicate.
(http://home.pipeline.com/~hbaker1/ObjectIdentity.html).  If you really
want to write a method that means "instantaneously has the same
contents as another collection" then you can - but the aim is that
the language and its core libraries won't rely on such user-defined
predicates - so if you want one, it can be rather more specialised
than a Java equals method.

We think the main change from standard Java practice
will be having to use immutable lists or tuples instead of mutable
collections as *keys* in hash tables, and in some cases, substituting
those hash tables for sets.

cheers

James