* João Cristóvão
The case is that for very long and complex structures, filled with trivial values, and with an obvious default value, writing that default value is a task best left for the compiler, with the help of generics.
I do see value here. My biggest problem with the package is that the basic types like Int have defaults. While it clearly makes sense to define ParseOptions or ConnectInfo as an instance of Default, I don't see who has the authority to declare defaults for Int. Especially combined with generic deriving, this can lead to hard-to-detect bugs. And to achieve the desired behavior you need to newtype-wrap those Ints half of the time anyway. OTOH, I'd say defaults for [], Data.Map etc. are *probably* fine. Roman