Robin Green wrote:
On Wed, 29 Mar 2006 12:50:02 +0100
Jon Fairbairn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
[snip]
1) choosing the optimal reduction strategy is undecidable
2) we shouldn't (in general) attempt to do undecidable
things automatically
[snip]
[snip]
I suggest that a Haskell program should be treated as an executable
specification. In some cases the compiler can't optimise the program
well enough, so we (by which I mean, ordinary programmers, not
compiler geeks) should be able to explicitly provide our own
optimisations, as rewrite rules (generalised ones, or specialised
ones for individual functions). Democratise the means of automated
optimisation!
This sounds good. The only thing I'm wondering is what do we actually gain
by using Haskell in the first place instead of just a strict language? It
seems that Haskell's lazyness gives a succinct but too inefficient program
which then needs extra code in the form of rewrite rules/pragmas, or else a
complete rewrite in terms of seq etc to get it to run fast enough without
space leaks...
Regards, Brian.
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