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programming-languagesscalaimplicits

Other programming languages that support implicits "a la Scala"

Scala implicits are very powerfull. I'm curious if they are a new/unique feature of Scala, or the concept already existed in other programming languages.

Thanks.

EDIT:

To clarify my question, yes, I'm talking about this concrete implementation. Having "implicit things" all around seemed strange at first, but having used it for a while and seeing how others use it, I'm impressed by how well it works.

Solution

  • Looks like the inspiration was Haskell's type classes. At least one blog article claims that implicits have their origin in Haskell type classes; the article refers to a 2006 paper by Martin Odersky entitled, Poor Man's Type Classes. And Daniel Sobral wrote a recent article on how to simulate type classes with implicits.