| > Better still, help us make it faster! | > | > Simon | | What can your average Haskell user do to help other than | point out things they don't like? Well-characterised test cases are always motivating: small programs that should go fast, and don't. Why does the brain-twisting version work fast, and the obvious code go slow. Ian Lynagh's recent message was a good example [although I'm afraid we have still not done anything about it] http://urchin.earth.li/~ian/bench/bench-0.2/ghc-6.4.1.html. The next step is to look at the intermediate code that GHC produces, and try to see what's different about the good and bad version. Sometimes, as Simon M's recent message mentioned, there are things that aren't easy to change, like auto-unboxing of arrays. Other times there are just missing SPECIALISE pragmas and the like. The more the problem is characterised, the more likely we are to do something about it. Simon