Most people don't understand pure functional programming either. Does that mean we should introduce unrestricted side effects in Haskell?
-- Lennart On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 4:22 PM, Thomas DuBuisson <thomas.dubuis...@gmail.com> wrote: > 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