My hypothesis was that the compiler was tracking the arities of each function in order to open up opportunities for partial application. That means there's some ambiguity when you write something like (+ 1) which, in Scheme is a complete application equal to 1 but may also be interpreted as a partial application equal to (lambda (x) (+ 1 x)).
There are many ways to mitigate that ambiguity statically and dynamically, but I feel there's always going to be a tradeoff between favoring partial application, favoring variadic functions, and the complexity/sophistication of your static checking or runtime environment.
I just made a stab at where the solution might lie in that design space. Turns out I was wrong.
There are many ways to mitigate that ambiguity statically and dynamically, but I feel there's always going to be a tradeoff between favoring partial application, favoring variadic functions, and the complexity/sophistication of your static checking or runtime environment.
I just made a stab at where the solution might lie in that design space. Turns out I was wrong.