It'd be interesting to think how one could encode performance characteristics into equations.
C makes performance easy and correctness hard. Haskell makes correctness easy and performance hard.
The trick is, in most programs, you only need performance for a tiny subset of the program. You need correctness throughout the whole program.
We have to bridge that gap:
1) Either use a compiler that hides away the operational details
2) Or use a language that directly maps to the operational semantics, but then is necessarily far away from the denotational ones
That's not really an interesting property of Haskell, though. You can always write correct but slow code in any language.
> It'd be interesting to think how one could encode performance characteristics into equations.
I've seen the concept of encoding performance in types played around with, but I can't find actual work (if any) that's been done on it.
Yes, but Haskell makes that exceptionally easy.