[Haskell-cafe] I read somewhere that for 90% of a wide class of computing problems, you only need 10% of the source code in Haskell, that you would in an imperative language.

[Andrew Coppin]

Eugene Kirpichov wrote:
> 2009/10/1 Andrew Coppin <andrewcoppin at btinternet.com>:
>   
>> Sure. But what is a computer program? It's a *list of instructions* that
>> tells a computer *how to do something*. And yet, the Haskell definition of
>> sum looks more like a definition of what a sum is rather than an actual,
>> usable procedure for *computing* that sum. (Of course, we know that it /is/
>> in fact executable... it just doesn't look it at first sight.)
>>     
>
> Well, we are not writing computer programs directly, even in C, that's
> what compilers are for.
> That's why I find arguments about the sequential essence of computer
> programs to be weak.
>   

It might be a better argument to say that human thinking is 
fundamentally sequential; parallel computers have been around for a 
little while now...