On 11/11/2010 12:38 PM, Darren New wrote:
>
> It's a lazy calculation. Hopefully the compiler can figure out when it
> doesn't actually need to do that.
>

However, as I understand it (keeping in mind that I don't actually know 
Haskell) it does have the implication that it can be much harder to 
reason about the efficiency of a program, since it depends quite a bit 
on what tricks the compiler can use.  This is in contrast to a language 
like C where the relative simplicity of the compiler means that the 
approximate performance is much more obvious.

It seems like a pretty common double-edged sword.  Smarter systems often 
allow you to do things more easily at the cost of the need for more 
mental space required to know when the smart system will fail and how to 
correct it.

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