As this topic popped out, my secrets for programming in Haskell are three words: assert, HUnit, QuickCheck.
- Create internal functions that verify the results of the exported ones, or maybe an easier to verify implementation that is slower, and put them on assert's. This has saved me a few times. - Create HUnit tests before writing the function itself (but after writing its type), and automate the execution (maybe with test-framework-hunit). This way you can test your implementation after type-checking, optimizations and/or fixed bugs. - If you can write down properties and Arbitrary's easily, do so and wire everything with the HUnit tests. I don't use QuickCheck as I use HUnit because it is often impossible to write meaningful Arbitrary instances (haven't tried SmallCheck yet, but most of the time the problem is with some kind of data type with lots of invariants to be maintained). Creating tests before the implementation + Haskell = Very few bugs + Almost no regressions -- Felipe. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
