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I don't think anything's much orthogonal to partiality of functions in languages with strong type systems, unfortunately :)

You wrote that array indexing is "a partial function from integers to the value set". If we're to take the suggestion seriously, then the practicality of it depends on how partial functions are represented in the language. Which itself is certainly not orthogonal to the Try-vs-exceptions issue.

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I'm not sure I can agree. I didn't say that the type of the array function is independent of the choice of error propagation mechanism. If you think an array is a partial function from integers to some value domain, say A, then in the exceptional POV the array type is int -> A, and in the Try[.] POV the array type is int -> Try [ A ].

I was talking about the mechanism for array indexing. In both cases, indexing is function application. So the choice of error representation is orthogonal. This is even more evidence that we should not use a different operator for array indexing as Rust does alas.

OK I can agree with that, I think I was taking what you wrote as a wider endorsement of Scala's approach than what you intended.

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