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

[Benjamin Franksen]

On Tuesday 25 January 2005 14:11, David Barton wrote:
> 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.)

Hey, I'll remember that one.

BTW, I'm glad you added this last remark, otherwise i would have been provoked 
into ranting about many an engineer's inability to apreciate abstraction, in 
spite of the fact that nothing they ever do would be possible without it.

Cheers,
Ben