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
jesse050717
Title: Web Development with Clojure, Third Edition, pg 116 Hi - I just started chapter 5 and I am stuck on page 116 while trying to star...
New
jamis
The following is cross-posted from the original Ray Tracer Challenge forum, from a post by garfieldnate. I’m cross-posting it so that the...
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
raul
Page 28: It implements io.ReaderAt on the store type. Sorry if it’s a dumb question but was the io.ReaderAt supposed to be io.ReadAt? ...
New
HarryDeveloper
Hi @venkats, It has been mentioned in the description of ‘Supervisory Job’ title that 2 things as mentioned below result in the same eff...
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
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
SlowburnAZ
Getting an error when installing the dependencies at the start of this chapter: could not compile dependency :exla, "mix compile" failed...
New
roadbike
From page 13: On Python 3.7, you can install the libraries with pip by running these commands inside a Python venv using Visual Studio ...
New

Other popular topics Top

AstonJ
A thread that every forum needs! Simply post a link to a track on YouTube (or SoundCloud or Vimeo amongst others!) on a separate line an...
New
ohm
Which, if any, games do you play? On what platform? I just bought (and completed) Minecraft Dungeons for my Nintendo Switch. Other than ...
New
AstonJ
Or looking forward to? :nerd_face:
498 13326 269
New
AstonJ
I’ve been hearing quite a lot of comments relating to the sound of a keyboard, with one of the most desirable of these called ‘thock’, he...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Author Spotlight Mike Riley @mriley This month, we turn the spotlight on Mike Riley, author of Portable Python Projects. Mike’s book ...
New
hilfordjames
There appears to have been an update that has changed the terminology for what has previously been known as the Taskbar Overflow - this h...
New
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Explore the power of Ash Framework by modeling and building the domain for a real-world web application. Rebecca Le @sevenseacat and ...
New
AstonJ
This is cool! DEEPSEEK-V3 ON M4 MAC: BLAZING FAST INFERENCE ON APPLE SILICON We just witnessed something incredible: the largest open-s...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Use advanced functional programming principles, practical Domain-Driven Design techniques, and production-ready Elixir code to build scal...
New

Sub Categories: