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Tweak README
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tkf committed Jan 7, 2022
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## Discussion

Julia is a dynamic language with a compiler that can aggressively optimize its
static portion. As such, many successful features of Julia provide the
usability of a dynamic language while paying attentions to the optimizability of
the composed code. However, native `throw`/`catch`-based exception is not
optimized aggressively and existing "static" solutions do not support idiomatic
high-level mode of programming. Try.jl explores [an alternative
solution](https://xkcd.com/927/) embracing the dynamism of Julia while
restricting the overhead as much as possible to the form that the compiler can
optimize away.

### Dynamic returned value types for maximizing optimizability

Try.jl provides an API inspired by Rust's `Result` type. However, to fully
unlock the power of Julia, Try.jl uses the *small `Union` types* instead of a
concretely typed `struct` type. This is essential for idiomatic clean
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and
[`Expect.Expected`](https://github.com/KristofferC/Expect.jl/blob/6834049306c2b53c1666cbed504655e36b56e3b4/src/Expect.jl#L6-L9)).
Using a concretely typed `struct` as returned type has some benefits in that it
is easy to control the result of type inference. However, this is at the cost
of losing the opportunity for the compiler to eliminate the success and/or
failure branches. A similar optimization can happen in principle with the
concrete `struct` approach with some aggressive (post-inference) inlining,
scalar replacement of aggregate, and dead code elimination. However, since type
inference is the main driving force in the inter-procedural analysis of the
Julia compiler, `Union` return type is likely to continue to be the most
effective way to communicate the intent of the code with the compiler (e.g., if
a function call always succeeds, return an `Ok{T}`). (That said, Try.jl also
contains supports for concretely-typed returned value when `Union` is not
appropriate. This is for experimenting if such a manual "type-stabilization" is
a viable approach and if providing a seamless interop API is possible.)
is easy to control the result of type inference. However, this forces user to
compute the type of the untaken paths. This is tedious and sometimes simply
impossible. Futhermore, the benefit of (superficial) type-stabilization is at
the cost of losing the opportunity for the compiler to eliminate the success
and/or failure branches. A similar optimization can still happen in principle
with the concrete `struct` approach with the combination of (post-inference)
inlining, scalar replacement of aggregate, and dead code elimination. However,
since type inference is the main driving force in the inter-procedural analysis
and optimization in the Julia compiler, `Union` return type is likely to
continue to be the most effective way to communicate the intent of the code with
the compiler (e.g., if a function call always succeeds, return an `Ok{T}`).

(That said, Try.jl also contains supports for concretely-typed returned value
when `Union` is not appropriate. This is for experimenting if such a manual
"type-instability-hiding" is a viable approach at a large scale and if providing
a uniform API is possible.)

### Debuggable error handling

A potential usability issue for using the `Result` type is that the detailed
context of the error is lost by the time the user received an error. This makes
debugging Julia programs hard compared to simply `throw`ing the exception. To
solve this problem, Try.jl provides an *error trace* mechanism for recording the
backtrace of the error. This can be toggled using `Try.enable_errortrace()` at
the run-time. This is inspired by Zig's [Error Return
mitigate this problem, Try.jl provides an *error trace* mechanism for recording
the backtrace of the error. This can be toggled using `Try.enable_errortrace()`
at the run-time. This is inspired by Zig's [Error Return
Traces](https://ziglang.org/documentation/master/#Error-Return-Traces).

### EAFP and traits

Try.jl exposes a limited set of "verbs" based on Julia `Base` such as
`Try.take!`. These functions have a catch-all default definition that returns
an error value of type `Err{NotImplementedError}`. This let us use these
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