[Haskell-cafe] Collections

[Chaddaï Fouché]

Andrew Coppin writes:
>  Maybe it's just a culture thing then... In your typical OOP language,
>  you spend five minutes thinking "now, what collection type shall I use
>  here?" before going on to actually write the code. In Haskell, you just
>  go "OK, so I'll put a list here..."
>

Well lists are really useful, but I don't think all Haskell
programmers are like you, in fact I think only the enthusiast newbies
(like.. you maybe ?) only use lists without asking themselves if there
is not a data structure better suited to their problem. A lot of work
in the functional world goes to improve existing data structures,
traversal and upgrade means and inventing new data structures to
resolve real-world problems. Real Haskell programs don't limit
themselves to lists, eg. if you look at xmonad you'll see that zippers
play a really important role in the powerfulness of the code and it's
elegance.

--
Jedaï