[Haskell-cafe] Why Maybe exists if there is Either?

[Artyom Kazak]

On 01/09/2014 08:36 PM, Vlatko Basic wrote:
> But instance declarations wouldn't be needed because we already have 
> all the instances for Either. The point would be to have them unified.
Consider a generic Show instance for Either – there’s no way¹ to make it 
behave differently for Either () (or Maybe if it was a type synonym). I 
think there are other cases in which we want Maybe to behave differently 
from Either, but I can’t think of any on the spot.

¹ this point also applies to String, which is a type synonym for [Char] 
– and it was solved somewhat inelegantly by adding an additional method 
to Show typeclass *specifically* for showing lists of things.