On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 18:50 -0500, Steve Schafer wrote:
On Thu, 15 Jan 2009 17:16:04 -0500 (EST), you wrote:
What I don't understand is why Monoid and Monad are objectionable, while Hash, Vector, Boolean, and Integer are (presumably) not objectionable. They all appear equally technical to me.
I think the name issue is a red herring. The real issue is that, after being confronted by a concept with an unfamiliar name, it can be very difficult to figure out the nature of the concept. That is, it's not the name itself that's the problem, it's the fact that trying to understand what it means often leads you on an interminable Alice-in-Wonderland-esque journey that never seems to get anywhere.
I agree with interminable but certainly you go somewhere. A lot of people like Haskell for this property. "How do you know that a monoid action is isomorphic to a monoid homomorphism into an endomorphism monoid?" "Well, I was trying to append two lists in Haskell..." For an actual interminable Alice-in-Wonderland-esque journey that never seems to get anywhere, try to write C# programs that inter-operate with Microsoft Office.