The problem is the current definition of sum for lists which uses foldl, i.e non-strict left fold sum = foldl (+) 0 It's utterly broken. Either we should change it to foldl' to work on some types where addition is strict, Option A: sum = foldl' (+) 0 or alternatively (to make people using lazy accumulator types), Option B: sum = foldr (+) 0 The current state is no good for anyone or anything. --- Related issue which Hecate didn't clearly mention, is that Foldable class default implementation has class Foldable f where ... sum = getSum . foldMap Sum -- this is "good" lazy definition If we select option A, then I argue that for consistency the default `Foldable.sum` should be sum = getSum . foldMap' Sum -- strict foldMap' If we select option B, Foldable definition doesn't need to be changed. --- I repeat, using non-strict left fold, foldl, for sum and product is not good for anything. Either foldr or foldl'. I have no strong preference. Current state is unacceptable. - Oleg On 18.10.2020 22.24, Henning Thielemann wrote:
On Sun, 18 Oct 2020, Hécate wrote:
In conclusion, leaving things to the optimiser that could be trivially made fast every time seems needlessly risky.
`seq` is still a hack. A strict 'sum' and 'product' would still fail on a lazy accumulator type, say a lazy pair type. If at all, sum and product should be deepseq-strict. So currently, letting the optimiser make a lazy sum strict is still the smaller hack.
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