[Haskell-cafe] seq (was: Article review: Category Theory)

[Brian Hulley]

Neil Mitchell wrote:
> Hi Brian,
>> Is there any solution that would allow excess laziness to be removed
>> from a Haskell program such that Hask would be a category?
>
> class Seq a where
>    seq :: a -> b -> b
>
> Then you have a different seq based on the types, and it doesn't go
> wrong. You would probably want deriving Seq support.

This seems an amazingly neat solution to a really terrible problem, so:

1) Does anyone know why this was not used in the first place?

2) Would it be good to use this in future versions of Haskell?

3) Is there any practical program which requires the current seq that could 
not be rewritten to use the typeclass seq?

Thanks, Brian.
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