[Haskell-cafe] Re: Haskell Weekly News: Issue 140 - November 22, 2009

[Maurí­cio CA]

 > Incidentally, I've always wondered about the politically correct
 > way of referring to this programming language (and related
 > implementation in the above-mentioned type system) in academic
 > circles;

Is this a question of politically correctness? Since there's no
discrimination or prejudice involved, I think it's more of a
question of social rules. If you are using a word where it's
going to be indexed, like article titles, I vote for beeing
accurate. But outside that, it's difficult to answer
this in a way that extends beyond one's own circle of friends.
Censoring a bad word may be polite for some, and offensive for
others, what could we do about that? Regarding brainfuck itself,
I think beeing censored is part of the joke.

 > In general, if a programming language-related term contains what
 > is generally regarded as a profane word as a component, for
 > what kinds of written material should I prioritize accuracy vs.
 > propriety?

If we decide to allow * inside conids and varids in Haskell, and
have a rule that names clash when they differ only by a letter
replaced by a *, we have gone too far.

Best,
Maurício