[Haskell-cafe] Re: On the verge of ... giving up!

[apfelmus]

ajb at spamcop.net wrote:
> However, arguably the biggest imperatives for Haskell 98 was to remove
> features that would confuse undergraduates.
> [...]
> People want to write "map" instead of "fmap".  We could have come up
> with an alternative name for the list-version of "map" and not showed
> "map" to newbies.

Couldn't the "too much overloading for undergrads" issue be solved by 
providing a LearningPrelude and a RealHackersPrelude? :) The condition 
is that the former exports the same or less functions with the same or 
less general types than the latter, so that function names are the same 
and there's no infantilizing.

A stronger condition would be that every valid LearningPrelude program 
should be a valid RealHackersPrelude program. This is probably 
preferred, but may be tricky due to overloading ambiguities.

Regards,
apfelmus