[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Newbie : How come that cyclic recursive lists areefficient ?

[David Barton]

Benjamin Fransen writes:

> There *is no* difference between the two if one views them as pure
> mathematical values. Questions of run time speed or memory usage, i.e.
> efficiency (which your original question was about) are clearly outside
the
> realm of pure values, and thus we may perceive them as distinct in this
wider
> setting.
>
> My favourite analogy for this is the old joke about a topologist being a
> person who cannot see any difference between a cup and a doghnut.

The engineer's response, of course, at the thought of ignoring questions
about run time speed and memory usage, is that a topologist is a person who
doesn't know his ass from a hole in the ground.

(I was told this quote was actually from abstract algebraists, when
confronted by the famous description of a topologist, but what the heck.)

Dave Barton
EDAptive Computing