[Haskell-cafe] Haskell reference documentation, laws first or laws last?

[Chris Smith]

Ah, I misunderstood you as well.  I agree that the laws should be included
in the type class documentation.  In fact, most of the documentation from
the link should probably be moved into the documentation for the class,
rather than a stand-alone section.

On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 9:15 PM David Feuer <david.feuer at gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm not talking about whether they're first or last. They're currently not
> part of the class documentation *at all*. They're only in the
> Data.Traversable documentation.
>
> On Thu, Sep 16, 2021, 7:45 PM Viktor Dukhovni <ietf-dane at dukhovni.org>
> wrote:
>
>> On Thu, Sep 16, 2021 at 06:51:42PM -0400, David Feuer wrote:
>>
>> > The last time I went to look at the laws it took me a couple minutes to
>> > find them. I use them to write instances. Pretty important, IMO.
>>
>> I agree the laws are important to document, I just don't think they
>> belong at the top of the module.  The beginner to intermediate users
>> will be using the library and existing instances for some time before
>> they start to write their own instances.
>>
>> If more modules adopt something like the style of the new Data.Foldable,
>> experienced users will know to look for the laws at the end, if not
>> still present at the top of the module.
>>
>> Of course perhaps the community would prefer the original Laws first
>> format, I'm fine with that emerging as the consensus.  Perhaps worthy
>> of a separate thread (made it so).
>>
>> Of course the conjectured users who might most benefit from not being
>> intimidated by being exposed to laws before they're ready to understand
>> them might not be present on this forum...
>>
>> --
>>     Viktor.
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