[Haskell-cafe] Re: Wikipedia on first-class object

[Achim Schneider]

Jonathan Cast <jonathanccast at fastmail.fm> wrote:
>
> _|_ is the denotation of every Haskell expression whose  
> denotation is _|_.
>
Mu.

> Why take away _|_?
> 
Because, when zenning about

instance (Eq a) => Eq [a] where
    []     == []     = True
    (x:xs) == (y:ys) = x == y && xs == ys
    _xs    == _ys    = False

and 

[n..] == [m..], 

the first thing I notice is

n == m && n+1 == m+1

, which already expresses all of infinity in one instance and can be
trivially cancelled to

n == m

, which makes the whole darn thing only _|_ if n or m is _|_, which no
member of [n..] can be as long as n isn't or 1 or + has funny ideas.

I finally begin to understand my love and hate relationship with
formalisms: It involves cuddling with fixed points while protecting
them from evil data and fixed points they don't like as well as
reduction strategies that don't see their full beauty.