[Haskell-cafe] Comments from OCaml Hacker Brian Hurt

[Thomas DuBuisson]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 4:12 PM, Sittampalam, Ganesh
<ganesh.sittampalam at credit-suisse.com> wrote:
> Lennart Augustsson wrote:
>> I have replied on his blog, but I'll repeat the gist of it here.
>> Why is there a fear of using existing terminology that is exact?
>> Why do people want to invent new words when there are already
>> existing ones with the exact meaning that you want? If I see Monoid I
>> know what it is, if I didn't know I could just look on Wikipedia.
>> If I see Appendable I can guess what it might be, but exactly what
>> does it mean?
>
> I would suggest that having to look things up slows people down
> and might distract them from learning other, perhaps more useful,
> things about the language.

Exactly.  For example, the entry for monoid on Wikipedia starts:
"In abstract algebra, a branch of mathematics, a monoid is an
algebraic structure with a single, associative binary operation and an
identity element."

I've had some set theory, but most programmers I know have not.