Haskell 98 Report

[Fergus Henderson]

On 31-May-2001, C.Reinke <C.Reinke@ukc.ac.uk> wrote:
> 
>  "..it's easy enough for programmers who want a generalized version to just cut
>    and paste the code from the Haskell report and give it a more general type
>                                  signature,.." 
> 
>                           Fergus Henderson, June 2001
> 
> Is this definition of reuse in Haskell quotable?-)

Sure, feel free to go ahead and quote it (you just did already ;-).

But it's taken a little out of context.
Certainly I wouldn't recommend that as a method of code reuse
in ordinary cases, let alone posit it as a _definition_ of reuse.

However, in this particular case, where the algorithm is fairly trivial,
and the code is well tested, the costs of cut-and-paste reuse are not
high, and specifically the downside of that approach is comparable
to the downside of the other approach, namely the need to diagnose
and fix type errors in programs like the one I posted.
So we need to consider the likely frequency of these scenarios,
and the benefits/costs of keeping the Haskell 98 standard as stable
as possible or making minor changes like this that could also cause
problems when converting between one "Haskell 98, 2002 revision"
compiler and another "classic Haskell 98" implementation.

It's all about trade-offs.

-- 
Fergus Henderson <fjh@cs.mu.oz.au>  |  "I have always known that the pursuit
                                    |  of excellence is a lethal habit"
WWW: <http://www.cs.mu.oz.au/~fjh>  |     -- the last words of T. S. Garp.