[Haskell-cafe] Shrinking the Prelude: The "categorical" approach

[Henning Thielemann]

On Wed, 20 Dec 2006, Imam Tashdid ul Alam wrote:

> Bulat Ziganshin raised: Num is intrinsically bound to
> the compiler. sad. so let's leave Num out. this
> basically means we will avoid "abstract algebra" in
> general. that is, forget "groups", "rings", for now,

See http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Libraries_and_tools/Mathematics#Type_class_hierarchies

> Henning Thielemann provided links to CAL: hi Henning,
> would you mind if we "steal" some of the good looking
> names in your Prelude?

You have to direct this question to the CAL inventors. :-) Indeed I'd
preferred if they had written an alternative Prelude for Haskell and a
Java byte code back-end rather than hacking an independent language.

> I suggest the convention that Control.Monad is always imported as M.
> this would mean we use M.plus, M.zero, M.lift and so on.

Seconded!

About the question, whether functions should be provided in the most 
general context, I refer to
  http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Slim_instance_declaration