[Haskell-cafe] Clearly, Haskell is ill-founded

[Andrew Coppin]

Conor McBride wrote:
> Hi all
>
> It's true that some systems are better characterised as corecursive
> "coprograms", rather than as recursive "programs". This is not a
> popular or well-understood distinction. In my career as an advocate
> for total programming (in some carefully delineated fragment of a
> language) I have many times been gotcha'ed thus: "but an operating
> system is a program which isn't supposed to terminate". No, an
> operating system is supposed to remain responsive. And that's what
> total coprograms do.
>
> By the looks of this article, the program versus coprogram distinction
> seems to have occasioned an unprecedented degree of existential angst
> for this individual.
>
> Even so, I'd say that it's worth raising awareness of it. Haskell's
> identification of inductive data with coinductive data, however well
> motivated, has allowed people to be lazy. People aren't so likely to
> be thinking "do I mean inductive or coinductive here?", "is this
> function productive?" etc. The usual style is to write as if
> everything is inductive, and if it still works on infinite data, to
> pat ourselves on the back for using Haskell rather than ML. I'm
> certainly guilty of that.
>
> I'd go as far as to suggest that "codata" be made a keyword, at
> present doubling for "data", but with the documentary purpose of
> indicating that a different mode of (co)programming is in order. It
> might also be the basis of better warnings, optimisations, etc.
> Moreover, it becomes a necessary distinction if we ever need
> to identify a total fragment of Haskell. Overkill, perhaps, but
> I often find it's something I want to express.
>
> Just a thought

Erm... Wait a sec... coroutines, comonads, coprograms, codata... what in 
the name of goodness does "co" actually *mean* anyway??