Fwd: Proposal: Add singleton function to Data.List module

[Sven Panne]

Am Mi., 21. Aug. 2019 um 12:22 Uhr schrieb Nathan Bouscal <
nbouscal at gmail.com>:

> I would strongly encourage anyone inclined to say things like “there's no benefit
> in having the function” to consider reframing the sentiment as “I wouldn’t
> benefit from having the function, and don’t understand the benefit others
> will gain.” Once you’ve done that reframe, you can notice that there’s a
> lack of understanding toward which the appropriate emotional stance is
> curiosity, not dismissiveness. A lot of people have clearly expressed in
> this thread that they would benefit from this function, and when you assert
> as fact that such benefit does not exist, you’re implicitly dismissing and
> devaluing their experience. [...]
>

There is also another side of the coin: A lot of people have clearly
expressed counterarguments,  so *their* experience has been equally
"dismissed" or "devalued". Reframing the discussion shouldn't be biased,
otherwise it's just a cheap trick to make one side of the discussion more
valuable/stronger. Furthermore, a technical discussion doesn't need to be
an excercise in nonviolent communication, as long as people don't start
insulting each other.

I think the main problem of this discussion (and other similar threads on
this list) is that there is no consensus about how to design an API. IMHO,
piling up little helpers just because they came up in a few places is a
recipe for horrible, bloated APIs. The questions one should ask are "Does
it generalize things?", "Does it make my API more powerful?" (i.e. can I do
things I couldn't do before), "Does it remove common pitfalls?" etc.  But
this is just my personal view, obviously others seem to disagree.... :-/
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