[Haskell-cafe] Comments from OCaml Hacker Brian Hurt

[Dan Piponi]

On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 7:34 AM, John Goerzen <jgoerzen at complete.org> quoted:

> I'd be inclined to call it something like "Appendable".

But I don't know what Appendable means. Maybe it means

> class Appendable a where
>    append :: a x -> x -> a x

ie. a container x's lets you can add an x to the end

or maybe it means

> class Appendable a where
>    append :: a -> x -> a

ie. something that you can append anything to

or maybe it means

> class Appendable a where
>    append :: a -> a -> a

so you can append any two elements of the same type together.

Why use words that are so vague when there's already word that
unambiguously says what the type class looks like? And even worse, why
use duplicate terminology to make it even harder to see when
mathematicians and computer scientists are talking about the same
thing, so widening the divide between two groups of people who have
much to share.
--
Dan