Names in Haskell (Was: [Haskell-cafe] Comments from OCaml HackerBr ian Hurt)

[Derek Elkins]

On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 18:50 -0500, Steve Schafer wrote:
> On Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:16:04 -0500 (EST), you wrote:
> 
> >What I don't understand is why Monoid and Monad are objectionable, while 
> >Hash, Vector, Boolean, and Integer are (presumably) not objectionable. 
> >They all appear equally technical to me.
> 
> I think the name issue is a red herring. The real issue is that, after
> being confronted by a concept with an unfamiliar name, it can be very
> difficult to figure out the nature of the concept. That is, it's not the
> name itself that's the problem, it's the fact that trying to understand
> what it means often leads you on an interminable
> Alice-in-Wonderland-esque journey that never seems to get anywhere.

I agree with interminable but certainly you go somewhere.  A lot of
people like Haskell for this property.

"How do you know that a monoid action is isomorphic to a monoid
homomorphism into an endomorphism monoid?"

"Well, I was trying to append two lists in Haskell..."

For an actual interminable Alice-in-Wonderland-esque journey that never
seems to get anywhere, try to write C# programs that inter-operate with
Microsoft Office.