Bug Reporting

A few months ago, I posted a quandary to haskell-cafe about seemingly ineffable types in GHC: for a certain term, the type inferred by GHCi could not simply be listed in the source code, as this would cause the type checker to complain. I didn't get any bites on my post, and I chalked it up to some complications I didn't understand and no one had time to explain, and I went on to thinking about other things.

Last year, I graded a C++ assignment for a class at the local university (and my alma mater). We required the use of std::set, and a student noticed that he could modify the value of a member of a std::set in place, and the compiler wouldn't complain.

Both of these turn out to be bugs, in GHC and in the C++ standard. The lessons I've learned about programming languages:

1. If something doesn't make sense, investigate. If it turns out you just don't understand something that is the way it is for complicated reasons, you still will have learned something useful.
2. The squeaky wheel gets the grease. I asked the Haskell Cafe about the GHC infelicity, but didn't inquire at the GHC-specific mailing lists, and I didn't keep asking when nobody responded.
3. When you see something funny looking, don't just ask people why it's funny looking. Instead, push things to their logical conclusion, and find a test case that's obviously wrong. This will give people a reason to listen to you.