[erlang-questions] erlang *****

[Matthew Dempsky]

On 3/17/08, Richard A. O'Keefe <ok@REDACTED> wrote:
> I am somewhat at a loss to interpret "Awww".  I would like to think
>  it's "oh dear, now I understand why this is a really bad idea", but
>  I suspect it's "silly little you for caring about such things."

I think it's "So what? There are lots of programming constructs that
when misused can lead to inefficiency."

You'd laugh at someone who was concerned about adding recursive
functions to a language because a naive user might write "fibb(N) =
fibb(N - 1) + fibb(N - 2)" or that adding general looping constructs
means we can't ensure arbitrary programs will halt on a given input.
I see no reason to worry about similar arguments for disjunctive
patterns.