Re: [Haskell-cafe] I read somewhere that for 90% of a wide class of computing problems, you only need 10% of the source code in Haskell, that you would in an imperative language.

Eugene Kirpichov wrote:

2009/10/1 Andrew Coppin :

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Sure. But what is a computer program? It's a *list of instructions* that tells a computer *how to do something*. And yet, the Haskell definition of sum looks more like a definition of what a sum is rather than an actual, usable procedure for *computing* that sum. (Of course, we know that it /is/ in fact executable... it just doesn't look it at first sight.)

Well, we are not writing computer programs directly, even in C, that's what compilers are for. That's why I find arguments about the sequential essence of computer programs to be weak.

It might be a better argument to say that human thinking is fundamentally sequential; parallel computers have been around for a little while now...