On Sat, Aug 23, 2008 at 8:41 AM, Johannes Waldmann < [EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> (*) that's the main problem I see with Hutton's book > http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/book.html<http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/%7Egmh/book.html>: > it has "Declaring types and classes" as chapter 10 (of 13 total). > I think that's way off - and it leaves readers (students) > with the impression that declarative programming > basically deals with (functions on) lists. > This may have been true in the 70s/80s (LISP, Prolog), > but it certainly shouldn't be true today. > > Recall the proverb "Get your data structures correct first, > and the rest of the program will write itself." > (David Jones, cited in John Bentley: More Programming Pearls) > I think this is independent of language and paradigm. > > If functions on lists isn't the thing, what is the thing? "Data structures" isn't a very satisfactory answer for a n00b like me, because it doesn't capture Haskell's distinctive. I've had this same sense, but in a vague newbie way. This also seems to reflect a growing dissatisfaction with the prelude. Back in the day lazy lists were the thing and the Prelude seems to largely reflect that. Now it's something else I can't possibly articulate. But I can definitely see it trying to replace a significant amount of prelude functionality. Witness that nobody loves strings anymore because ByteStrings are cooler. The stream/fusion lists are way cooler than the stock lists. etc. Or I have no idea what I'm talking about. -- Darrin
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