I have replied on his blog, but I'll repeat the gist of it here. Why is there a fear of using existing terminology that is exact? Why do people want to invent new words when there are already existing ones with the exact meaning that you want? If I see Monoid I know what it is, if I didn't know I could just look on Wikipedia. If I see Appendable I can guess what it might be, but exactly what does it mean?
-- Lennart On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 3:34 PM, John Goerzen <jgoer...@complete.org> wrote: > Hi folks, > > Don Stewart noticed this blog post on Haskell by Brian Hurt, an OCaml > hacker: > > http://enfranchisedmind.com/blog/2009/01/15/random-thoughts-on-haskell/ > > It's a great post, and I encourage people to read it. I'd like to > highlight one particular paragraph: > > > One thing that does annoy me about Haskell- naming. Say you've > noticed a common pattern, a lot of data structures are similar to > the difference list I described above, in that they have an empty > state and the ability to append things onto the end. Now, for > various reasons, you want to give this pattern a name using on > Haskell's tools for expressing common idioms as general patterns > (type classes, in this case). What name do you give it? I'd be > inclined to call it something like "Appendable". But no, Haskell > calls this pattern a "Monoid". Yep, that's all a monoid is- > something with an empty state and the ability to append things to > the end. Well, it's a little more general than that, but not > much. Simon Peyton Jones once commented that the biggest mistake > Haskell made was to call them "monads" instead of "warm, fluffy > things". Well, Haskell is exacerbating that mistake. Haskell > developers, stop letting the category theorists name > things. Please. I beg of you. > > I'd like to echo that sentiment! > > He went on to add: > > If you?re not a category theorists, and you're learning (or thinking > of learning) Haskell, don't get scared off by names like "monoid" or > "functor". And ignore anyone who starts their explanation with > references to category theory- you don't need to know category > theory, and I don't think it helps. > > I'd echo that one too. > > -- John > _______________________________________________ > Haskell-Cafe mailing list > Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org > http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe > _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe