Can we get the benefits of transitive dependencies without undermining security?

Re:Can we get the benefits of transitive dependencies withou... by justinpombrio on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @11:22AM (#42866962)

That's an ordinary argument type. Like:

    void my_function_to_connect_to_server(
        Network network,
        int port,
        String server_name
    )

It's not categorically different than the other arguments, and doesn't require an effect type system.

At this point I'm not sure if you're misunderstanding what I'm proposing, or if you don't know what an effect system is. If you care to communicate, you'll need to say something more substantial. Walk me through what you're trying to say.

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Re:Can we get the benefits of transitive dependencies withou... by marcosdumay on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @02:02PM (#42869525)

Make it generic, with some kind of Resource interface that Network is one of the implementations¹, and you get a dynamic effect system.

But that thing you wrote is a static effect system. Having a singleton that you need to carry with the type doesn't make it not part of the type system.

1 - Or actually use Resource as a class. But Java wouldn't do this.

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Re:Can we get the benefits of transitive dependencies withou... by justinpombrio on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @03:19PM (#42870611)

Thank you for the clarity.

> But that thing you wrote is a static effect system.

The thing I wrote is expressible in Java's type system as it is today. So you're saying that Java has a static effect system?

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Re:Can we get the benefits of transitive dependencies withou... by yencabulator on Wednesday January 29, 2025 @06:20PM (#42872654)

I think you're talking about what power a type system needs to say that this function doesn't have undesirable side effects, while Justin is saying if you can't just "import std.net" and access the network by side effects (and can't make raw syscalls either, or poke around in raw memory), and nothing hands you a Network value, a plain old boring type system is enough.

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