joseds

joseds

Effective Haskell: B6.0, Chapter 2, p.83: Suggestion: Distinguish thunks by name

Hi, I got a bit sidetracked, but I now have time to continue with your book, which I am enjoying a lot. You explain the co-recursion in chapter 2 really well and I think that showing how the (lazy) evaluation works step-by-step is very helpful and corrected a wrong idea I had about how foldr operates, thanks!

I have just one recommendation regarding naming:

I think that all is very well explained, but some of the readers may get confused that all thunks are named <thunk> when in case of the Fibonacci numbers, in each step one is the tail of the other. So, to use different names for different things, maybe something like <thunk_n> and <thunk_n+1> could be helpful. Maybe it would even be enough to distinguish them “locally” as <thunk0> and <thunk1>.

Marked As Solved

RebeccaSkinner

RebeccaSkinner

Author of Effective Haskell

I’m glad you are enjoying the book! I see what you mean about the <thunk> references. My initial goal was to use a name that made it clear that we don’t know too much about what’s inside of the thunk, merely that it is some arbitrary thunk. I might try both your suggestion of adding clearly names, as well as an aside to explain that we don’t care too much about the details of the thunks, and see which one ends up seeming to be more clear when I try both approaches. I really appreciate the note!

Where Next?

Popular Pragmatic Bookshelf topics Top

iPaul
page 37 ANTLRInputStream input = new ANTLRInputStream(is); as of ANTLR 4 .8 should be: CharStream stream = CharStreams.fromStream(i...
New
yulkin
your book suggests to use Image.toByteData() to convert image to bytes, however I get the following error: "the getter ‘toByteData’ isn’t...
New
simonpeter
When I try the command to create a pair of migration files I get an error. user=&gt; (create-migration "guestbook") Execution error (Ill...
New
Mmm
Hi, build fails on: bracket-lib = “~0.8.1” when running on Mac Mini M1 Rust version 1.5.0: Compiling winit v0.22.2 error[E0308]: mi...
New
gilesdotcodes
In case this helps anyone, I’ve had issues setting up the rails source code. Here were the solutions: In Gemfile, change gem 'rails' t...
New
AndyDavis3416
@noelrappin Running the webpack dev server, I receive the following warning: ERROR in tsconfig.json TS18003: No inputs were found in c...
New
brunogirin
When installing Cards as an editable package, I get the following error: ERROR: File “setup.py” not found. Directory cannot be installe...
New
New
oaklandgit
Hi, I completed chapter 6 but am getting the following error when running: thread 'main' panicked at 'Failed to load texture: IoError(O...
New
mcpierce
@mfazio23 I’ve applied the changes from Chapter 5 of the book and everything builds correctly and runs. But, when I try to start a game,...
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
If it’s a mechanical keyboard, which switches do you have? Would you recommend it? Why? What will your next keyboard be? Pics always w...
New
Exadra37
I am thinking in building or buy a desktop computer for programing, both professionally and on my free time, and my choice of OS is Linux...
New
siddhant3030
I’m thinking of buying a monitor that I can rotate to use as a vertical monitor? Also, I want to know if someone is using it for program...
New
dasdom
No chair. I have a standing desk. This post was split into a dedicated thread from our thread about chairs :slight_smile:
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Design and develop sophisticated 2D games that are as much fun to make as they are to play. From particle effects and pathfinding to soci...
New
Exadra37
I am asking for any distro that only has the bare-bones to be able to get a shell in the server and then just install the packages as we ...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Build highly interactive applications without ever leaving Elixir, the way the experts do. Let LiveView take care of performance, scalabi...
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Jamis Buck @jamis This month, we have the pleasure of spotlighting author Jamis Buck, who has written Mazes for Prog...
New
NewsBot
Node.js v22.14.0 has been released. Link: Release 2025-02-11, Version 22.14.0 'Jod' (LTS), @aduh95 · nodejs/node · GitHub
New

Sub Categories: