Functor, Applicative, Monad, Foldable, Traversable instances for (, , ) a b

[Jakub Daniel]

> On 1 Apr 2017, at 13:00, Andreas Abel <abela at chalmers.se> wrote:
> 
> In the end, I should be grateful for the FTP.  It will provide amusement for years.
> 
> Q: What is the length of pi?
> A: Dunno, infinity?
> Q: And what is the length of just pi?
> 
> GHCi, version 7.10.3: http://www.haskell.org/ghc/  :? for help
> Prelude> length (Just pi)
> 1
> 
> ROFL.
> 
>> On 01.04.2017 12:32, Ivan Lazar Miljenovic wrote:
>> On 1 April 2017 at 19:42, Henrik Nilsson
>> <Henrik.Nilsson at nottingham.ac.uk> wrote:
>>> Hi all,
>>> 
>>>> It is perfectly to limit the concept of "length" to
>>>> 
>>>> * linear structures (lists, arrays, etc.)
>>>>  [branching structures do not have a length, they may have a size or
>>>>  maximum depth]
>>>> 
>>>> * which have variable length
>>>>  [why would you otherwise ask for the length?]
>>> 
>>> Just for the record, I could not agree more.
>>> 
>>> Looking up "length", e.g. Merriam-Webster:
>>> 
>>>    1a :  the longer or longest dimension of an object
>>> 
>>> What we really are talking about here is counting the number of
>>> elements in a data structure. That is clearly applicable to lists
>>> as well as trees and tuples interpreted in particular ways.
>>> 
>>> But calling it "length" is not particularly helpful. Nor the effort to
>>> reappropriate the very concept of "length" through a categorical
>>> interpretation.
>>> 
>>> It would have been a lot better if a name suggesting a sense of
>>> counting, or at least a name suggesting that this is something different
>>> than the usual length, would have been picked. Maybe elementcount
>>> or ever flength.
>> 
>> I agree, but on the other hand this should have been done _before_
>> FTP; at this stage, I lean towards marking this down as one of the
>> known warts of Haskell - possibly with a 3 major version GHC cycle to
>> migrate to a better name once the bikeshedding has been completed -
>> and moving on rather than being revisionist and using this as an
>> excuse to go backwards.
>> 
>> So far, the arguments against these instances that I've seen are:
>> 
>> * The name of the length function is misleading for such instances
>> (with all respect to Tony, agreed; but see above); I don't think I've
>> seen anyone else complain about any of the other function names
>> though.
>> 
>> * Since these classes/instances are now exported from the Prelude,
>> previous code that wouldn't have have type-checked are now valid and
>> thus produce unexpected results (I was against the Prelude export when
>> FTP was being debated, but now - with the possible exception of people
>> learning to program - I think this is a matter of needing to be more
>> aware of the types and using our wonderful REPL environments to test
>> functions rather than blindly just writing code without validating the
>> code logic).
>> 
>> TL;DR: I didn't 100% agree with the way FTP was done precisely due to
>> the problems people have with these instances, but now let's not go
>> backwards (and the tuple instances I've found very useful).
>> 
>>> 
>>> Names matter.
>>> 
>>> /Henrik
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
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>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
> Andreas Abel  <><      Du bist der geliebte Mensch.
> 
> Department of Computer Science and Engineering
> Chalmers and Gothenburg University, Sweden
> 
> andreas.abel at gu.se
> http://www.cse.chalmers.se/~abela/
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