Why does Haskell say Nothing instead of None? Didn't occur to them or was rejected? I can see why Some is less than ideal since it rhymes with "sum".
Conversation
And I presume Rust far postdates these Haskell decisions. But I still suspect lots of options got discussed.
1
1
Rust borrowed the naming of Option, Some, and None from OCaml and SML. Not sure where Maybe, Just, and Nothing came from - maybe Miranda?
2
2
Hmm, I can't see maybe defined in Miranda's stdenv (cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/d), but it might have been a datatype commonly in use? That said, idiomatic Miranda and early Haskell leaned much more on partial functions, so it might have seen less use.
Another Haskell precursor, Orwell, does not define it in its stdenv either: homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/wadler/papers/
1
2
You might need to go through the early Haskell papers and try to spot where it first appears 🤔
1
2
Show replies