[Haskell-cafe] Point-free style (Was: Things to avoid)

[Simon Marlow]

On 10 February 2005 14:23, Jan-Willem Maessen wrote:

> If you're trying to avoid obscurity, why advocate point-free style?
> 
> I ask this question to be deliberately provocative; I'm not trying to
> single you out in particular.  So, to everybody: What's so great about
> point-free style?

I completely agree.  I find myself tending towards pointfull-style these
days, perhaps because I'm getting lazy and find it easier to read code
when lots of things have names.  I use explicit function definitions and
lambda bindings a lot more than I used to - at some point I figured out
that the number of characters in my source code isn't the right target
for optimisation :-)

I don't think a general "things to avoid" section should be advocating
not naming things... in fact I would advocate the reverse.  Name as many
things as possible, at least until you have a good feel for how much
point-freeness is going to result in code that you can read again in 6
months time.

Cheers,
	Simon