On Tue, May 21, 2013 at 6:22 AM, Henning Thielemann
On Tue, 21 May 2013, Carter Schonwald wrote:
2) does the change make learning the language more challenging? No. In fact, i've encountered *many* more smart people getting confused as to why the map / fold etc in prelude are all list specific than i've seen people struggle with type classes.
The Haskell beginners I know, even have problems with 'map' and even more 'fold' being higher order functions.
Notwithstanding that anyone having trouble with a monomorphic foldr is unlikely to be significantly worse off with the Data.Foldable version, and notwithstanding also that I've seen redundant monomorphic functions create more confusion than they seem to avoid, the base objection here is and always has been misguided at best. Being a beginner is by definition an ephemeral state; the entire purpose of being a beginner is to eventually stop being one. Don't design a language (or anything else) around the needs of beginners unless you intend that only beginners will use it, in which case one wonders why they're even bothering. - C.