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

brianokken
Many tasks_proj/tests directories exist in chapters 2, 3, 5 that have tests that use the custom markers smoke and get, which are not decl...
New
jeffmcompsci
Title: Design and Build Great Web APIs - typo “https://company-atk.herokuapp.com/2258ie4t68jv” (page 19, third bullet in URL list) Typo:...
New
lirux
Hi Jamis, I think there’s an issue with a test on chapter 6. I own the ebook, version P1.0 Feb. 2019. This test doesn’t pass for me: ...
New
mikecargal
Title: Hands-on Rust: question about get_component (page 295) (feel free to respond. “You dug you’re own hole… good luck”) I have somet...
New
dsmith42
Hey there, I’m enjoying this book and have learned a few things alredayd. However, in Chapter 4 I believe we are meant to see the “&gt;...
New
s2k
Hi all, currently I wonder how the Tailwind colours work (or don’t work). For example, in app/views/layouts/application.html.erb I have...
New
kolossal
Hi, I need some help, I’m new to rust and was learning through your book. but I got stuck at the last stage of distribution. Whenever I t...
New
jwandekoken
Book: Programming Phoenix LiveView, page 142 (157/378), file lib/pento_web/live/product_live/form_component.ex, in the function below: d...
New
dtonhofer
@parrt In the context of Chapter 4.3, the grammar Java.g4, meant to parse Java 6 compilation units, no longer passes ANTLR (currently 4....
New
bjnord
Hello @herbert ! Trying to get the very first “Hello, Bracket Terminal!" example to run (p. 53). I develop on an Amazon EC2 instance runn...
New

Other popular topics Top

PragmaticBookshelf
Stop developing web apps with yesterday’s tools. Today, developers are increasingly adopting Clojure as a web-development platform. See f...
New
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
AstonJ
You might be thinking we should just ask who’s not using VSCode :joy: however there are some new additions in the space that might give V...
New
Rainer
My first contact with Erlang was about 2 years ago when I used RabbitMQ, which is written in Erlang, for my job. This made me curious and...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
From finance to artificial intelligence, genetic algorithms are a powerful tool with a wide array of applications. But you don't need an ...
New
AstonJ
I have seen the keycaps I want - they are due for a group-buy this week but won’t be delivered until October next year!!! :rofl: The Ser...
New
AstonJ
Do the test and post your score :nerd_face: :keyboard: If possible, please add info such as the keyboard you’re using, the layout (Qw...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Create efficient, elegant software tests in pytest, Python's most powerful testing framework. Brian Okken @brianokken Edited by Kat...
New
New

Sub Categories: