I'm trying to break out of my imperative mind-set by learning Haskell in small snippets. After a few successes I've hit a bit of a roadblock with one of the classic dynamic programming problems, the longest increasing subsequence: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_increasing_subsequence The most efficient algorithm relies on destructive updates, so a simple translation doesn't seem possible. I've been trying to think of a way of removing the need for destructive updates while keeping the efficiency, but so far without much luck. Ideally, I'd like to avoid threading the whole thing with a state monad, since then it would just be an imperative algorithm in disguise. Any suggestions would be very gratefully appreciated. Cheers, Matt