[Haskell-cafe] what do you think of haskell ? (yes, it's a bit general ...:)

minh thu noteed at gmail.com
Thu Jun 15 12:51:43 EDT 2006


hi, thanks for your answer.

the kind of thing i want to do : computer graphics programming.
so array is better than list (no ?) to represent images ...

bye
vo minh thu
(hey, my last name is VO, and my first name is Thu, not Minh :)


2006/6/15, Neil Mitchell <ndmitchell at gmail.com>:
> Hi Minh,
>
> When I write Haskell, its because I want to write the code quickly,
> not because I want it to run quickly. GHC is a wonderful compiler and
> makes things go fast, but Hugs is faster at compiling, so I always use
> Hugs (WinHugs in fact). If your focus is on things going fast, then
> with Haskell you have to think harder to get this - but its certainly
> possible, see the shootout benchmarks.
>
> > * array
> Why do you want to write things with Array's - in C the default type
> of everything is an Array, and you occasionally use a Linked List. In
> Haskell its the opposite - linked lists are very nice and natural - I
> never use arrays.
>
> > * laziness / array (again)
> Laziness often makes my code go faster - because I am lazy and
> Haskell's laziness means that when I combine things in just "lazy"
> ways Haskell drops the things I did that were useless.
>
> > * randomIO
> > side-effect is nicely resolved with monad. and you have to thread your state.
> > if you're writing your monad or use a transformer, things are quite
> > explicitly (even if it's implicit in the do notation) threaded.
> Yes, C is nicer for this kind of thing, in my opinion - nicer from a
> practical view, even if it is pretty horrid in the end.
>
> > * generally
> > my general feeling for haskell vs c is:
> > in haskell i always have to learn new things to get my work done ;
> > although haskell is really easy to learn in the first step, it's
> > becoming increasingly hard to get what's the *trick* to do what i
> > want.
> I think I know very few tricks, and have never felt the need to know
> more. If you stick to simple Haskell it keeps your brain for other
> things.
>
> I think what you seem to be saying is that to write fast Haskell
> programs requires more effort and more work than C programming?
> Exactly what Haskell programs were you trying to write, and did you
> try just writing them in a naive way and checking that just "simple
> and stupid" doesn't give you the performance you need?
>
> Maybe if you learnt the FFI aspects of Haskell, you could write your
> code in Haskell, and then either optimise the Haskell or just give up
> and move that portion to C, keeping the rest in Haskell.
>
> Thanks
>
> Neil
>


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