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POWhat makes Iteratees worth the complexity?
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copied!<p>First, I understand the <em>how</em> of iteratees, well enough that I could probably write a simplistic and buggy implementation without referring back to any existing ones.</p> <p>What I'd really like to know is <em>why</em> people seem to find them so fascinating, or under what circumstances their benefits justify their complexity. Comparing them to lazy I/O there is a very clear benefit, but that seems an awful lot like a straw man to me. I never felt comfortable about lazy I/O in the first place, and I avoid it except for the occasional <code>hGetContents</code> or <code>readFile</code>, mostly in very simple programs.</p> <p>In real-world scenarios I generally use traditional I/O interfaces with control abstractions appropriate to the task. In that context I just don't see the benefit of iteratees, or to what task they are an appropriate control abstraction. Most of the time they seem more like unnecessary complexity or even a counterproductive inversion of control.</p> <p>I've read a fair number of articles about them and sources that make use of them, but have not yet found a compelling example that actually made me think anything along the lines of "oh, yea, I'd have used them there too." Maybe I just haven't read the right ones. Or perhaps there is a yet-to-be-devised interface, simpler than any I've yet seen, that would make them feel less like a Swiss Army Chainsaw.</p> <p>Am I just suffering from not-invented-here syndrome or is my unease well-founded? Or is it perhaps something else entirely?</p>

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