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throweway | 10 years ago

Quick poll: who prefers laziness by default. Who prefers strictness by default?

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tikhonj|10 years ago

I'm a big fan of taking advantage of laziness and think it's drastically underrated. It's incredibly expressive and it's what really makes Haskell more than just an ML variant.

I gave a slightly rough talk about "Thinking with Laziness"[1] which tries to capture how expressive it can be. I'm a big fan and sad that so many people are willing to categorically dismiss it as a wart in Haskell.

[1]: https://begriffs.com/posts/2015-06-17-thinking-with-laziness...

lmm|10 years ago

I prefer strict by default, despite liking fancy typed languages. It's easy to build lazy on top of strict (as long as functions are values), but impossible to build strict on top of lazy. Consistency and reasonability are important, and the runtime performance of Haskell doesn't have either. I currently use Scala and have high hopes for Idris.

hackaflocka|10 years ago

I prefer the laziness of PHP and Python. JavaScript threw me off with its eagerness. Took a while getting used to.

spicyj|10 years ago

In what ways are PHP and Python more lazy than JS?