Haskell performance

[Arjan van IJzendoorn]

Hello S\'ebastien,

> I am a Haskell newbie, but have been interested in Haskell (and 
> generally speaking ML-derivates) for some time. I am currently 
> evaluating different languages for implementing an application which 
> will have to manipulate large graphs representing the structure of 
> programs and their evolution.

Maybe you should consider using a combination of Haskell and C++. I bet 
there are good graph libraries in C++ available so that would save a 
lot of work. Using Haskell for the front end  is a lot more fun than 
C++ or Java, I think. As you say you are a Haskell newbie I must warn 
you that linking to a C++ library is not trivial and that's not a 
Haskell problem but more a compiler-options-problem.

What I suggest is exactly what I am doing at the moment; I am building 
a tool to edit Bayesian networks and to apply inference algorithms to 
them. The GUI is written in Haskell (wxHaskell) and the inference is a 
C++ library I am reusing. The choice for C++ was not speed but reuse. I 
have never come across a problem for which Haskell was too slow, but 
maybe that depends on my choice of problems. The tool I am writing now 
runs smoothly on an ancient (700Mhz) computer.

Good luck, Arjan