An evaluation strategy that delays the computation of expressions until their values are actually needed. This can improve performance by avoiding unnecessary calculations and enabling infinite data structures.
The term 'lazy' was adopted in the 1970s from its colloquial meaning of avoiding work, perfectly capturing how this evaluation strategy postpones computation. It became prominent with functional programming languages like Haskell.
Lazy evaluation is like being the world's most efficient procrastinator - it only does work when absolutely necessary! This means you can create an infinite list of numbers and only the ones you actually use get calculated, which is mind-bending but incredibly powerful.
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