Malcolm Wallace
you would simply replace the implicit "import Prelude" with an explicit "import Prelude.Standard" (or use a build flag like -fimplicit-prelude, or +98).
Why not keep it implicit? If you want the alternative behavior, you know where to get it (import Prelude (), -fno-implicit-prelude, etc). This way, you avoid breaking a lot of existing code, and also a lot of "hello world"-class programs could be written without any explicit imports or special tricks. Any programs written to use a more granular set of Prelude modules, would likely need an array of imports anyway, so the loss would be less in that case.
Some data-structures people (e.g. Chris Okasaki) are of the opinion that lists tend to be over-used (because they are built-in), when other datatypes might be much more appropriate.
Hmm...so the best way to educate programmers about this is to make lists harder to use? :-) Anyway, I'll see your Okasaki, and raise you one Simon Thomson (since "The Craft.." is the only Haskell book I have on my desk at the moment). Lists aren't mentioned until chapter 4, but chapter 4 and 5 discuss lists, chapter 5 is called "Generalization", but as far as I can tell, still talks exclusively about lists, and in the remaining chapters, there are lists on nearly every page. Over-used, perhaps, but the fact is that lists are - like it or not - a staple of FP in general, and Haskell in particular. Now, I'm sure a lot of uses for List could be replaced by more specific and appropriate types: Stack, LazyStream, IterationMonad, Deque, FingerTree etc etc. But this adds complexity to your program - if a list does the job well enough, why not use it? I'm reminded of one of the XP idioms: always first try to solve the problem in the simplest way that can possibly work. </hubris> :-) -k -- If I haven't seen further, it is by standing in the footprints of giants