ok wrote:
I think it is at least mildly interesting that people commented about things like whether to do it using explicit parameters ("pointful" style) or higher-order functions ("pointless" style) and whether to use the list monad or concatMap, but everyone seemed to be happy with a cubic time algorithm when there's a linear time one.
Speaking only for myself, I concern myself with an algorithm when I am learning an algorithm, or using one to solve a real problem. I try out list monads to learn about list monads, because I am already comfortable with list comprehensions. I concern myself with syntax manipulations and pointedness for the sheer unadulterated fun of it. Then I go back to my day job using C++. Everyone has their own motivations. I would not draw any further conclusions about them from the data at hand. Dan