Go rant

[Andrei Alexandrescu]

Walter Bright wrote:
> The Haskell folks really need to find a better canonical example.

Add to that the Erlang folk, too. I'm reading the book on Erlang by 
Armstrong. Here's the Quicksort section and example on page 52:

"Here's how to write a sort algorithm[footnote] using two list 
comprehensions."

The footnote says (how the hell did this make it through the editorial 
pass???)

"This code is shown for its elegance rather than its efficiency. Using 
++ in this way is not generally considered good programming practice."

So if the code is inefficient and in poor programming practice, how in 
this blessed world could it count as elegant?

I have gathered a fair amount of samples of involuntary humor from that 
book. I wouldn't want to go on about that because it could too easily be 
interpreted as poor taste competitiveness. Let me say I don't think the 
book is well written.


Andrei