Conversation

eleanor

@zornsllama

Apr 29, 2021

petition to ban all uses of the word "functor" other than the category theoretic sense

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Apr 29, 2021

I always say ‘module function’ when talking about ML module systems. I hope that this is less confusing!

eleanor

@zornsllama

Apr 29, 2021

I have no idea what an ML module system is :( I tried to learn ocaml once and got upset at its verbose syntax and USE OF GODFORSAKEN EXCEPTIONS

naia

@nbouscal

Apr 29, 2021

I think ML module functors are reasonably interpretable as functors. Though I guess part of the difficulty of banning non-categoric uses is that really a lot of things are reasonably interpretable as functors 😅

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Replying to

@nbouscal

I guess I think it's perhaps weird in the same sense as if you were to call an integer or string type 'monoid' but I dunno. I do see what you are saying though!

11:51 AM · Apr 29, 2021Twitter Web App

Replying to

and

Also yeah, you could also say that the functors from category theory are actually more general than Haskell's `Functor` typeclass, so perhaps that was a bad name too! 😂 (for those not in the know it's really defining an endofunctor in the category of haskell types)