I'm sure someone is going to tell me there is an obscure compsci reason why it couldn't have been this: [...] This "obscure" reason is actually one of the core

I'm sure someone is going to tell me there is an obscure compsci reason why it couldn't have been this: [...] This "obscure" reason is actually one of the core features of the language and one of the reasons it's called Haskell. A thing that you are going to use all the time writing Haskell. The reason is called currying: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currying