Point-Free or Die: Tacit Programming in Haskell and Beyond - Amar Shah

Amar Shah explores point-free syntax and tacit programming in Haskell, discussing when it improves code readability and when it makes it worse.

Point-free syntax allows you to define functions without naming their arguments. But is “point-free” just point-less? Ostensibly, tacit definitions can calibrate code to the appropriate level of abstraction. But which level is most appropriate? When is a point-free definition better than its “pointed” variation? And when is it spectacularly worse? Let’s be explicit about tacit programming. Let’s apply eta-reduction to produce it. Let’s develop our intuition for its expressive power. Let’s speak at length, about the unspoken.