Re: [Haskell] Newbie : How come that cyclic recursive lists areefficient ?
There *is no* difference between the two if one views them as pure mathematical values. Questions of run time speed or memory usage, i.e. efficiency (which your original question was about) are clearly outside
Benjamin Fransen writes: the
realm of pure values, and thus we may perceive them as distinct in this wider setting.
My favourite analogy for this is the old joke about a topologist being a person who cannot see any difference between a cup and a doghnut.
The engineer's response, of course, at the thought of ignoring questions about run time speed and memory usage, is that a topologist is a person who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground. (I was told this quote was actually from abstract algebraists, when confronted by the famous description of a topologist, but what the heck.) Dave Barton EDAptive Computing
On Tuesday 25 January 2005 14:11, David Barton wrote:
Benjamin Fransen writes:
There *is no* difference between the two if one views them as pure mathematical values. Questions of run time speed or memory usage, i.e. efficiency (which your original question was about) are clearly outside
the
realm of pure values, and thus we may perceive them as distinct in this
wider
setting.
My favourite analogy for this is the old joke about a topologist being a person who cannot see any difference between a cup and a doghnut.
The engineer's response, of course, at the thought of ignoring questions about run time speed and memory usage, is that a topologist is a person who doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.
(I was told this quote was actually from abstract algebraists, when confronted by the famous description of a topologist, but what the heck.)
Hey, I'll remember that one. BTW, I'm glad you added this last remark, otherwise i would have been provoked into ranting about many an engineer's inability to apreciate abstraction, in spite of the fact that nothing they ever do would be possible without it. Cheers, Ben
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David Barton