Introduction
By default, Haskell's List type is a simple linked list and as such is inefficient for many common operations (getting by index, appending, iterating from the end, etc.). A number of other more efficient list-like data structures are available, most notably the array-like Vector and the list-like Seq.
NeoHaskell should choose one of these two data structures as its default list type and support literals via the standard [1, 2, 3] syntax.
Impact on Principle of Least Astonishment
The fact that a simple list literal is inefficient to append or get by index and usually undesirable violates the Principle of Least Astonishment. Most new programmers expect sytactic sugar like [1, 2, 3]" to produce a commonly desirable data type without any additional effort. This change will align NeoHaskell with those expectations.
Impact on Principle of Developer Happiness
As noted below, this change will require less boilerplate of developers and allow them to get to actual code faster, as well as gently guiding developers to choose a data type without them having to decide which to use.
Impact on Principle of Least Effort
Currently, nearly every Haskell project requires a dependency on containers and/or vector and files are littered with imports and {-# LANGUAGE OverloadedList #-}s. This change will eliminate all of that overhead and allow the use of a sensible list type with better ergonomics.
Implementation
In early stages, this can be achieved via prelude and pragmas by the use of OverloadedLists with:
default IsList Vector -- or Seq
Considerations
Haskell's default lists are more efficient for LIFO queues than either of these data types. There could, however, be a Queue data type or the like to push developers in that when it's desirable.
List comprehensions (if they will be in NeoHaskell) would need to support this data type as well.
Vector is not pattern-matchable on. Seq does not have this issue, which might be a point in favor of it.