On Tue, Jan 29, 2013 at 1:53 PM, Casey Basichis <caseybasichis@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Dmitry,

Thanks for the links.  I've been through the 24 Days of Hackage, but I think its time to run through them again now that I'm a little more familiar with everything.

Why do you think browsing function by function is a bad idea?  It seems that knowing exactly what the most used functions are would be an extremely effective way of finding both which parts of the Prelude and Hackage are most broadly useful (instead of browsing them like a phonebook) and also finding support from the community as the most commonly used functions would likely be the easiest to find support for.

Find out "the most used functions" seems to be eminently desirable.

To do that we need to count function-uses.
And to do that we need to know what to count.

Do we?

If you remember, the cost-centre mode of counting functions in haskell programs was precisely because the usual (first-order language) mode of counting would lead to the strange conclusion that map and foldr were the most used and therefore most inefficient functions in Haskell! So a new way of counting had to be devised.

There is a book: Mathsemantics by Edward Macneal which deals with things like:
How does an airline count the number of passengers. I quote from the book:

I 1980 I was one passenger, ten passengers, eighteen passengers, thirty-six passengers, forty-two passengers, fifty-five passengers, seventy-two passengers and ninety-four passengers.  Each of these statements is true.

He then goes on to explain.

I was one passenger in the sense that I was a person who traveled by air in that year.
I was eighteen passengers in the sense that I made eighteen round trips.
I was forty-two passengers in the sense that on forty-two different occasions I entered and exited the system of a different carrier.
I was seventy-two passengers in the sense that on seventy-two occasions I was on board an aircraft when it took off from one place and landed at another.
I was ninety-four passengers in the sense that I made ninety-four separate entrances and exits from airport terminal buildings.

[He missed the explanation for 10!]

He goes on to say that these differences are not mere technicalities and its important to get the sense of 'passenger'

So… like 'passenger', how many meanings does 'function-use' have?

Rusi
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