John Hughes:
Wolfgang Jeltsch:
it seems that there is not yet a ticket about putting seq into a type class (again).
And I hope it stays that way.
This sounds like a good idea in principle, but it was a nightmare in practice.
First, the implementation details and the difference between _|_ and const _|_ make a difference to space behaviour, and one needs a way to control that. Hiding the differences can make space leaks *impossible* to fix.
Along similar lines: I like Haskell being lazy, but it has to make it easier for the programmer to enforce eager evaluation where necessary for good resource utilisation. `seq' already is annoying and inconvenient (as it forces you to re-arrange your code), let's not make it worse. I'd like Haskell' to make it easier to force evaluation, which is why I like the bang pattern proposal. Manuel