[Haskell-cafe] Line noise

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On 2008 Sep 21, at 15:10, Andrew Coppin wrote:
> Philippa Cowderoy wrote:
>> On Sun, 21 Sep 2008, Andrew Coppin wrote:
>>> - Several standard library functions have names which clash badly  
>>> with the
>>> usual meanings of those names - e.g., "break", "return", "id".
>>
>> For this one, I'm inclined to say "welcome to a new paradigm".  
>> Though having to tell my dad briefly that do isn't a loop construct  
>> was odd for a moment.
>
> I think "return" is a rather bad choice of name. But on the other  
> hand, I can't think of a better one. And let's face it, anything has  
> to be better than (>>=). (Most cryptic name ever?)

Applicative and Arrow have the replacement for "return" right:  "pure".
No argumnt about (>>=), but on the other hand I remember (>>=) but  
never remember the arrow or Applicative operators.

> Idiomatic Haskell seems to consist *only* of single-letter variable  
> names. When did you last see a pattern like (customer:customers)?  
> No, it'd be (c:cs), which isn't very self-

I tend to use something like cust:custs; I prefer to be able to read  
it.  If the code is generic then I'll use generic names --- which  
alerts me to its genericness.

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH