[Haskell-cafe] what are the points in pointsfree?

[Dan Piponi]

'Point free' is standard mathematical terminology for nothing more
than the style of defining functions without making direct reference
to the elements the functions act on.

This style is exemplified by category theory and the reason it's
called 'point free' rather than 'element free' is that category theory
arose from algebraic topology where many of the functions under
discussion act on sets of points in a topological space. 'Point'
certainly doesn't refer to anything to do with CPOs and relating this
use of the word point to arrows from terminal objects doesn't work too
well if you consider vector spaces where maps from terminal objects
don't correspond to (the usual notion of) points.
--
Dan

(Apologies if you received this message twice.)