[Haskell-cafe] On documentation

[Andrew Coppin]

Alexander Solla wrote:
>
> After all, the source is always structured in more-or-less the same 
> way.  Fragments of text with opaque -- unless/until you understand 
> them -- combinators "join" two distinct concepts/types into functions. 
>  A chain of functions (potentially at various levels of abstraction) 
> is a computation.  You "use" these things by finding a chain of types 
> (Start -> A), (A -> B), (B -> C), ... (N -> Goal) and composing, 
> filling in additional details as necessary.  Building that chain means 
> doing depth first searches on a tree/graph of possibilities, and 
> usually isn't so much fun.  The library developer is in the best 
> position to do exactly that, having already done it while constructing 
> the library.

In Haskell even learning to use a library has an algebraic structure. ;^)

Actually, I was thinking just this afternoon... If you're writing in an 
OO language, you can use UML to produce diagrams that give you a kind of 
at-a-glance overview of the saliant parts of something. (Depending on 
how much detail you choose to include in the diagram.) I wander if 
anybody has a standardised notation that might be applicable to FP in 
general or Haskell specifically...