> In the absence of proper language support, “sum types” are just structs with discipline.
With enough compiler support they could be more than that. For example, I submitted a tagged union analysis feature request to gcc and clang, and someone generalized it into a guard builtin.
https://github.com/llvm/llvm-project/issues/74205
https://gcc.gnu.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=112840
GCC proved to be too complex for me to hack this in though. To this day I'm hoping someone better than me will implement it.
Nice post, but the flashy thing on the side is pretty distracting. I liked the tuples and maybes.
Not distracting at all, it feels nostalgic to me. Id rather have these flashy things than a million popups and registration forms following you around, which is basically the modern web. I hate it so much. This site is pure balsam for my soul.
Both nostalgic and distracting for me.