Point-Free or Die: Tacit Programming in Haskell and Beyond
summary
Argues that point‑free is a communication tool, not religion: use eta‑reduction and combinators when they make intent clearer and stop when they obscure it. Shows Haskell examples (sum ≡ foldr (+) 0, composition, blackbird combinator), pulls the on combinator from Data.Function to simplify color‑matching (zipWith min `on` countColors then sum), and even implements compose in Ruby by monkey‑patching Proc. Demonstrates that partial point‑free definitions often win over fully tacit ones.
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chapters (6)
- 0:00Start
- 1:50calibrate abstraction
- 5:05wholemeal programming
- 10:37"blackbird" combinator
- 13:58n-dimensional distance
- 30:54beyond
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