David Sankel wrote:
After reading several recent papers I came to the understanding that there isn't consensus on the name of Applicative Functors. Several prefer to call them idioms:
"'Idiom' was the name McBride originally chose, but he and Paterson now favour the less evocative term `applicative functor'. We have a slight preference for the former, not least because it lends itself nicely to adjectival uses, as in `idiomatic traversal'"[1]
I also noticed use of the term Idiom in [2], [3], and [4].
I much prefer the name Applicative Functor, because 'idiom' and especially 'idiomatic' can mean lots of other things (just look up the word in a dictionary!). While an applicative functor is always a functor with 'pure' and 'ap' operations.
I'm writing a set of classes that includes AF's and I'm trying to decide whether to call the class Idiom. Anyone have more information on this question?
Why are you writing your own? How do your classes differ from the standard Control.Applicative? Twan