On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Sittampalam, Ganesh <ganesh.sittampa...@credit-suisse.com> wrote: > Lennart Augustsson wrote: >> 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? > > I would suggest that having to look things up slows people down > and might distract them from learning other, perhaps more useful, > things about the language.
Exactly. For example, the entry for monoid on Wikipedia starts: "In abstract algebra, a branch of mathematics, a monoid is an algebraic structure with a single, associative binary operation and an identity element." I've had some set theory, but most programmers I know have not. _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
