[Haskell-cafe] about Haskell code written to be "too smart"

Conal Elliott conal at conal.net
Tue Mar 24 17:18:10 EDT 2009


Hah!  It sure is.  :)

On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 2:17 PM, Peter Verswyvelen <bugfact at gmail.com>wrote:

> Sometimes that is very hard when the writer is way smarter than the reader
> :-)
> 2009/3/24 Conal Elliott <conal at conal.net>
>
> Another helpful strategy for the reader is to get smarter, i.e. to invest
>> effort in rising to the level of the writer.   Or just choose a different
>> book if s/he prefers.  - Conal
>>
>>
>> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 1:44 PM, Manlio Perillo <manlio_perillo at libero.it
>> > wrote:
>>
>>> Yitzchak Gale ha scritto:
>>>
>>>> [...]
>>>> So the bottom line is that Manlio is right, really. It's just
>>>> that Haskell is still very different than what most
>>>> programmers are used to. So it does take a while to
>>>> get a feeling for what is "too smart".
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Right, you centered the problem!
>>>
>>> The problem is where to place the separation line between "normal" and
>>> "too smart".
>>>
>>> Your function is readable, once I mentally separate each step.
>>> For someone with more experience, this operation may be automatic, and
>>> the function may appear totally natural.
>>>
>>> When writing these "dense" function, it is important, IMHO, to help the
>>> reader using comments, or by introducing intermediate functions.
>>>
>>>
>>> Manlio
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
>>> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
>>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>>>
>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
>> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
>> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>>
>>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20090324/bafc5072/attachment.htm


More information about the Haskell-Cafe mailing list