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

jimmykiang
This test is broken right out of the box… — FAIL: TestAgent (7.82s) agent_test.go:77: Error Trace: agent_test.go:77 agent_test.go:...
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
raul
Hi Travis! Thank you for the cool book! :slight_smile: I made a list of issues and thought I could post them chapter by chapter. I’m rev...
New
AleksandrKudashkin
On the page xv there is an instruction to run bin/setup from the main folder. I downloaded the source code today (12/03/21) and can’t see...
New
fynn
This is as much a suggestion as a question, as a note for others. Locally the SGP30 wasn’t available, so I ordered a SGP40. On page 53, ...
New
jskubick
I think I might have found a problem involving SwitchCompat, thumbTint, and trackTint. As entered, the SwitchCompat changes color to hol...
New
Charles
In general, the book isn’t yet updated for Phoenix version 1.6. On page 18 of the book, the authors indicate that an auto generated of ro...
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
redconfetti
Docker-Machine became part of the Docker Toolbox, which was deprecated in 2020, long after Docker Desktop supported Docker Engine nativel...
New
dachristenson
I’ve got to the end of Ch. 11, and the app runs, with all tabs displaying what they should – at first. After switching around between St...
New

Other popular topics Top

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
DevotionGeo
I know that -t flag is used along with -i flag for getting an interactive shell. But I cannot digest what the man page for docker run com...
New
AstonJ
We have a thread about the keyboards we have, but what about nice keyboards we come across that we want? If you have seen any that look n...
New
AstonJ
Thanks to @foxtrottwist’s and @Tomas’s posts in this thread: Poll: Which code editor do you use? I bought Onivim! :nerd_face: https://on...
New
AstonJ
This looks like a stunning keycap set :orange_heart: A LEGENDARY KEYBOARD LIVES ON When you bought an Apple Macintosh computer in the e...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Build highly interactive applications without ever leaving Elixir, the way the experts do. Let LiveView take care of performance, scalabi...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Use WebRTC to build web applications that stream media and data in real time directly from one user to another, all in the browser. ...
New
AstonJ
We’ve talked about his book briefly here but it is quickly becoming obsolete - so he’s decided to create a series of 7 podcasts, the firs...
New
PragmaticBookshelf
Build efficient applications that exploit the unique benefits of a pure functional language, learning from an engineer who uses Haskell t...
New
DevotionGeo
I have always used antique keyboards like Cherry MX 1800 or Cherry MX 8100 and almost always have modified the switches in some way, like...
New

Sub Categories: