[Haskell-cafe] the problem of design by negation

[David Fox]

What I do like about this so-called "negative" approach is that it
represents a part of a program's documentation that is usually omitted.  You
can look at the code and see exactly how and (to a certain extent) why the
program does what it does, but what you can't see is all the things it
doesn't do, and the reasons it doesn't do them.  This can be extremely
important to know when you are thinking about modifying a program.  The
change you are considering may have already been tried and rejected, but
unless these sorts of negative decisions are documented in the software you
may end up spinning your wheels.
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