It’s been some time but we’ve finally ticked off another goal on the roadmap. The basics of parametric polymorphism work. You can define a type, such as List(a), note that a syntax sugar for list cells and lists does not exist yet:

type List(a) = Nil
             | Cons ( head : a, tail : List(a) )

Here a is a type variable. It can be substituted for any concrete type.

Write a polymorphic function:

func list_length(l : List(a)) -> Int {
    match (l) {
        Nil -> { return 0 }
        Cons(_, rest) -> { return 1 + list_length(rest) }
    }
}

And call it with a list of numbers, or strings, or any concrete type.

List1 = Cons(1, Cons(2, Cons(3, Cons(4, Nil))))
print!(int_to_string(list_length(List1)) ++ "\n")

List2 = Cons("A", Cons("B", Cons("C", Nil)))
print!(int_to_string(list_length(List2)) ++ "\n")

There are some rough edges to clean up, for example the compiler doesn’t check whether the correct number of types or variables are listed when referring to a type (such as writing List when one should write List(a)). And polymorphism will become much more useful once Plasma supports other features such as higher order values/calls (next major goal) and interfaces.