Linear Haskell - Practical Linearity in a Higher-Order Polymorphic Language

Watch a 25-minute conference presentation from POPL 2018 exploring the integration of linear type systems with existing functional programming languages, specifically focusing on a novel approach in Haskell. Learn how the researchers designed a linear type system that maintains backwards compatibility while enabling code reuse across linear and non-linear library implementations. Discover their innovative method of attaching linearity to function arrows instead of creating separate linear and non-linear type counterparts, allowing linear functions to work with both linearly-bound and unrestricted values. Examine the practical applications demonstrated through their GHC compiler implementation, including the creation of mutable data with pure interfaces and the enforcement of protocols in I/O-performing functions. Presented by researchers from the University of Gothenburg, Tweag I/O, Indiana University, and Microsoft Research, this talk showcases how linear types can be seamlessly incorporated into conventional functional programming.