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

Imam Tashdid ul Alam uchchwhash at yahoo.com
Thu Dec 21 22:34:03 EST 2006


hi guys,
there's a page on the haskellwiki (called "The Other Prelude") now which has
a discussion page as well (like all wiki pages!). so let's do it.
on topic: 
this is why I think renaming is quite unnecessary. The Other Prelude should
be very concise, both conceptually and in size. IMHO this should increase
the ease of use. for someone who is new to Haskell, this prelude itself
should introduce him/her to the core concepts. Ease of (expert) use should
be provided by the other modules in the package. 
I think in a sense, it would make a lot of sense to include only those in
the Prelude which are important enough to go into the language report. it's
sort of obvious that the report does not do justice to the concept of monad
in the library, and wastes space discussing fairly obvious functions.
let's move the discussion to the wiki discussion page. contributors needed
for a "great" collaborative effort. ;)
cheers!
Imam



Ross Paterson wrote:
> 
> On Thu, Dec 21, 2006 at 07:16:16PM +0100, Henning Thielemann wrote:
>> About the question, whether functions should be provided in the most 
>> general context, I refer to
>>   http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Slim_instance_declaration
> 
> Certainly we all agree that a module that defines instances should export
> functions it uses that others can use in defining further instances,
> but I don't see the point of this rule as stated.  What would we gain
> if Ratio exported (+) on rationals with a different name?  Surely the
> important thing is the reusable auxiliary functions, if any, since the
> specialized method itself is available.
> 

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