Proposal: Make Semigroup as a superclass of Monoid

[Henning Thielemann]

On Mon, 4 May 2015, Edward Kmett wrote:

> The issue with a LiquidHaskell solution in this space, aside from the fact that it is an experiment that isn't
> part of the compiler or the language that we have, and uses assumptions about the way numbers work that don't
> hold for the ones we have, is that it is terribly invasive.
> In order to use it everything that ever wants to work with your shiny new non-empty list type needs to be
> written in LiquidHaskell to prove the non-empty invariant still holds. Refinement types are notoriously hard
> to use. On the other-hand a type like NonEmpty satisfies that invariant trivially: There is no empty
> constructor.
> 
> The price of this is that it is a different data type, with different operations.

In my experience with my non-empty package I found that I can lift that 
restriction by using type classes like Functor, Traversable etc.


> I love LiquidHaskell, but I'd be very hesitant to do anything or rather 
> to not do anything predicated on its existence.

Although LiquidHaskell is cool, I also prefer to solve simple problems 
with simple tools. Non-empty lists do not need a sophisticated prover 
framework, it can be solved with simple Haskell 98.