[dllthomas]

Of course it's not at all true that anything in Haskell that compiles works for any task X. It's not even quite true that, setting out trying to build something that accomplishes X, X will always be accomplished as soon as you get it to compile. However, in my experience, it is frequently true that it is surprisingly the case - I put together something somewhat large and it works first time where in another language (that I might even know better) I'd expect to have a few bugs to fix. People joke around, but I don't think anyone actually makes the either of the stronger assertions and expects to be believed, in which case I don't really think there's a problem (but I'm sorry if it bugs you!) - on the other hand, maybe I'm being overly charitable and people really are intending the stronger forms...