<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 1:56 AM, Henning Thielemann <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:schlepptop@henning-thielemann.de">schlepptop@henning-thielemann.de</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<div class="im">On <a href="tel:24.07.2011%2022" value="+12407201122" target="_blank">24.07.2011 22</a>:20, Antoine Latter wrote:<br>
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On Sat, Jul 23, 2011 at 1:41 PM, KC<<a href="mailto:kc1956@gmail.com" target="_blank">kc1956@gmail.com</a>> wrote:<br>
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It would be easier for beginners to "grok".<br>
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I think that assumes that all beginners have a strong foundation in<br>
algebra. Although it does have the advantage that the names are as<br>
abstract as the class.<br>
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As pointed out earlier in this list, the name of the class and the methods are inconsistent. Monoid refers to a general algebraic structure, whereas mempty and mappend refer to certain instances like lists.</blockquote><div>
<br></div><div>I don't know what the intention for the names was, but I read them as "syntactic" empty and append, as in the monoid constructs of algebra. In other words, we construct "words" by "appending" (or "concatenating") elements of a monoid. And we have an "empty" word.</div>
<div><br></div><div>This usage is common enough in mathematics.</div><div><br></div><div>After all, if we use the Monoid class interface for a type, we are explicitly using the monoid operations, and not the type's underlying interpretation for appending words in the type. Why should the generic monoid operator names reflect the underlying usage?</div>
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