On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Casey Basichis <caseybasic...@gmail.com>wrote:
> Hi Dmitry, > > Thanks for the links. I've been through the 24 Days of Hackage, but I > think its time to run through them again now that I'm a little more > familiar with everything. > > Why do you think browsing function by function is a bad idea? It seems > that knowing exactly what the most used functions are would be an extremely > effective way of finding both which parts of the Prelude and Hackage are > most broadly useful (instead of browsing them like a phonebook) and also > finding support from the community as the most commonly used functions > would likely be the easiest to find support for. > > Find out "the most used functions" seems to be eminently desirable. To do that we need to count function-uses. And to do that we need to know what to count. Do we? If you remember, the cost-centre mode of counting functions in haskell programs was precisely because the usual (first-order language) mode of counting would lead to the strange conclusion that map and foldr were the most used and therefore most inefficient functions in Haskell! So a new way of counting had to be devised. There is a book: Mathsemantics by Edward Macneal which deals with things like: How does an airline count the number of passengers. I quote from the book: I 1980 I was one passenger, ten passengers, eighteen passengers, thirty-six > passengers, forty-two passengers, fifty-five passengers, seventy-two > passengers and ninety-four passengers. Each of these statements is true. > He then goes on to explain. I was one passenger in the sense that I was a person who traveled by air in > that year. > I was eighteen passengers in the sense that I made eighteen round trips. > I was forty-two passengers in the sense that on forty-two different > occasions I entered and exited the system of a different carrier. > I was seventy-two passengers in the sense that on seventy-two occasions I > was on board an aircraft when it took off from one place and landed at > another. > I was ninety-four passengers in the sense that I made ninety-four separate > entrances and exits from airport terminal buildings. > [He missed the explanation for 10!] He goes on to say that these differences are not mere technicalities and its important to get the sense of 'passenger' So… like 'passenger', how many meanings does 'function-use' have? Rusi -- http://www.the-magus.in http://blog.languager.org
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