When You Should Use Lists in Haskell (Mostly, You Should Not)

TL;DR

This paper discusses the overuse of lists in Haskell, analyzing historical and current practices, and suggests that lists are often misapplied in functional programming.

Contribution

It provides a critical review of list usage in Haskell, highlighting when alternative data structures are more appropriate.

Findings

Lists are frequently overused in Haskell programming.

Alternative data structures can improve performance and code clarity.

Historical context clarifies current list usage patterns.

Abstract

We comment on the over-use of lists in functional programming. With this respect, we review history of Haskell and some of its libraries, and hint at current developments.