[Haskell-cafe] Re: Curried function terminology

[Daniel Fischer]

Am Montag 05 Oktober 2009 11:52:17 schrieb Jon Fairbairn:
> michael rice <nowgate at yahoo.com> writes:
> > This is from Learn You A Haskell:
<snip>
> > The language (in CAPS) in the above two paragraphs seems to
> > be backwards.
>
> It is. "5 is applied to that function" should be "5 is supplied to that
> function" (or that function is applied to 5) and so on. It's a fairly
> common error in writing this sort of thing¹, and given that the title
> "Learn You A Haskell" is totally ungrammatical, hardly seems surprising.
>
> > In the first paragraph, since functions are
> > conventionally "applied" to parameters shouldn't it read
> > something like THE PARTIALLY APPLIED FUNCTION IS THEN
> > APPLIED TO the 5? Or is the terminology different for
> > Haskell,

That would be correct but awkward. 
IMO it would be better to say that 5 is then supplied (or fed) to (the partially applied 
function).
I tend to feed arguments to functions if I don't want to apply a function to an argument.

>
> No, but Haskell does have a lot of non-native users of English among its
> users.

I'm not sure that's relevant for this kind of error. I think it's more a lack of 
familiarity with mathematical terminology.
>
>
> [1] A pet peeve of mine is "x supports y" being used backwards (as in
> "our application supports windows Vista", which would only make sense if
> it were something like a system tool that stopped Vista crashing.

Or if Microsoft uses the profits from App X to compensate deficits incurred by Vista.
Or if the application sports banners "Vista is great! Get you a Vista today!" :D

But seriously, yes, it's annoying.