Re: A Challenge Problem for Promise Designers

On Sat, Apr 27, 2013 at 9:55 AM, David Sheets <kosmo.zb@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]

> I think the major point of confusion in these discussions is the
> result of the framing of the discussion in terms of "flattening". I
> believe most beneficial viewpoint is that of "autolifting".
>
> That is, the exceptional case is not when the function argument of
> "then" returns a Future+ that gets "flattened" but rather when the
> function argument of "then" returns a non-Future that gets
> automatically lifted into a Future.
>
> This change in perspective is non-obvious because in many of these
> APIs there is no succinct lifting operation to make a Future from
> another value. This is a major reason why something like Future.of
> (Future.accept) is important.



I was following you until this last paragraph. As you define autolifting in
the first two paragraphs, Q(x) would be an autolifting operation. It has
the signature:

    promise<t> -> promise<t>
or
    t -> promise<t> // if t is not itself a promise type

Are you distinguishing "autolifting" vs "lifting"? If so, why do you think
it is important or desirable to provide a lifting operation (as opposed to
an autolifting operation)?


-- 
    Cheers,
    --MarkM