[Mid-discussion Summary] Proposal: add new Data.Bits.Bits(bitZero) method

[Henning Thielemann]

Am 22.02.2014 11:03, schrieb Herbert Valerio Riedel:

>      So far there doesn't seem to be a very clear preference for
>      'zeroBits' over 'zero'. It might help, if those how expressed some
>      kind of support for both variants could clarify if their preference
>      has any bias towards 'zeroBits' or 'zero'.


It turns out to be another round of the discussion qualified imports vs. 
unqualified imports. Many Haskell programmers seem to avoid qualified 
imports at all costs. I can't explain that, maybe the proponents of 
qualified imports can do it.

But I suspect that what we really discuss is something more critical: 
It's about conformance to PVP vs. non-conformance to PVP and thus 
letting Hackage users fix packages of lazy programmers. I guess, what 
the proponents of "zeroBit" really want, is to import unqualified, 
implicitly and without version bounds when importing 'base'. If you want 
to conform to the PVP and thus give the user a good experience, then you 
have to give up one of these three conveniences. Strict version bounds 
on "base" requires to update Cabal descriptions frequently. I guess you 
don't want that. Explicit imports mean that you have to maintain import 
lists. I guess you don't want that as well. The only convenient option 
is to import qualified. But then Bits.zero is much better than 
Bits.zeroBits.