andrewcoppin:
Darrin Thompson wrote:
These "tricks" going into Real World Haskell?
Seconded.
When you say someone needs to get familiar with the "STG paper" it scares me (a beginner) off a little, an I've been making an effort to approach the papers.
Well, I'm the sort of contrary person who reads random papers like that just for the fun of it. But when somebody says something like this, I don't think "ooo, that's scary", I think "ooo, somebody really ought to sit down and write a more gentle introduction". You really shouldn't *need* to know the exact implementation details to get some idea of what will perform well and what won't. But obviously you do need some kind of high-level understanding of what's going on. The STG paper isn't a good way to get that high-level overview.
Andrew, would you say you understand the original problem of why mean xs = sum xs / fromIntegral (length xs) was a bad idea now? Or why the left folds were a better solution? -- Don