[Haskell-cafe] Re: [Haskell] Top Level <-

[Bryan O'Sullivan]

On Fri, Aug 29, 2008 at 4:33 PM, Dan Weston <westondan at imageworks.com> wrote:
> C++ faced this very issue by saying that with global data, uniqueness of
> initialization is guaranteed but order of evaluation is not.

In C++ circles, this is referred to as the "static initialization
order fiasco", and it is a frequent cause of crashes that are very
difficult to debug.

http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/ctors.html#faq-10.12

I think it would be fair to say that C++ pushed this problem off to
every user of the language. I haven't seen a coherent description of
what the semantics of top-level "<-" should be, but avoidance of
widespread swearing would be at the top of my list of requirements.