Re:Is Haskell the Cure?
by eru on Monday October 03, 2011 @01:15PM
(#3067163)
I agree with you in most cases.
> Sure, you can do merge sort. Except that the list split step in Haskell is O(n) in time, while it is constant when using arrays. As well as merging lists, since you have to 'reattach' the second list as the tail of the first list.
It's no problem writing a merge-sort in Haskell that uses O(n log n) time. So who cares what the asymptotics of the individual elements of the algorithm are? (You may care about the actual speed of the whole thing and its parts, though.)
> Sure, you can do merge sort. Except that the list split step in Haskell is O(n) in time, while it is constant when using arrays. As well as merging lists, since you have to 'reattach' the second list as the tail of the first list.
It's no problem writing a merge-sort in Haskell that uses O(n log n) time. So who cares what the asymptotics of the individual elements of the algorithm are? (You may care about the actual speed of the whole thing and its parts, though.)