First of all, I would like to thank my first supervisor, Dr. Alan Smaill, for his encouragement to attempt this project and his positive criticism that kept me on track. I also owe much to my second supervisor, Dr. Ewen Denney, who pointed me to many details I was not aware of. It must have been hard for them to endure a student who worked on the automated transformation of strict functional programs with a lazy attitude.

A thousand words would not be enough to thank my mother for her continuous moral and financial support: without her my studies would have been impossible.

If it were not for Dr. Andreas Geyer-Schulz, my former supervisor at the Vienna University of Economics, I would have never discovered the mysterious field of Artificial Intelligence. Thanks a lot!

I owe at least half of my knowledge on both theory and practice of functional programming to the members of the Caml mailing list and the Usenet group “comp.lang.functional”: thanks for being an infinite source of wisdom!

Many thanks, too, to all my colleagues on the course and to the “Edinburgh University Renaissance Singers”: their welcome distraction showed me that there is life outside of computer labs.

Though I have never enjoyed meeting him personally, I am deeply indebted to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: his music brought light even into my darkest hours.

Last but not least, I am grateful to the SAAS, the Student Awards Agency for Scotland, which supported my studies in Edinburgh by paying my tuition fees.