Debugging haskell

[Joe English]

Sengan Baring-Gould wrote:

> http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/taoup/html/ch01s06.html
>
> states that "debugging often occupies three-quarters or more
> of development time".  I don't think that is my experience
> in Haskell... more like 1/4 at most. I was wondering what
> others felt.

Me either; in fact even 1/4 of the time debugging
sounds quite high.

When I first started using Haskell, most of my time
went to fighting with the typechecker, but once the
code checked it almost always Just Worked.  This is a
pleasant experience.

Nowadays, I spend the most time trying to understand
the problem, relying on the typechecker to tell me when
I've misunderstood something.  Optimizing for clarity and
figuring out the space behaviour are probably the next most
time-consuming activities.


--Joe English

  jenglish@flightlab.com