[Haskell-cafe] Re: GHC predictability

[Albert Y. C. Lai]

Andrew Coppin wrote:
> 2. Does anybody know how to actually read GHC's Core output anyway? To 
> me, it looks almost exactly like very, very complicated Haskell source 
> with a suspicious concentration of case expressions - but I understand 
> that in the Core language, many constructs actually mean something quite 
> different.

I can read most of GHC Core. I was never taught, and I never asked. I 
did not read GHC's source code. I just guessed.

I agree with your assessment about the domination by case expressions. 
They spell out the evaluation order. You need truckloads of them.

I slightly agree with your assessment about "complicated", but I call it 
detailed and tedious. This is an assembly language for functional 
programming. If it weren't detailed and tedious, it would have no right 
to exist.