Chad Scherrer wrote:
I'm starting to think the power of abstraction is a blessing and a curse. Haskell's abstraction mechanisms are so powerful that it's generally possible to come up with a way to solve a given problem elegantly and efficiently. On the other hand, if a problem isn't so well studied, the bulk of the work is in finding the right abstraction, which forces generalization beyond what would otherwise be needed (though it'll be easier the next time!).
I agree with you, which is why I especially liked this post[1] by Claus Reinke that shows how you work from the "obvious" brute-force code and apply small transformations to come up with the beautiful abstracted code. [1] http://permalink.gmane.org/gmane.comp.lang.haskell.cafe/26066