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Because names don’t carry meaning, they’re pointers: https://www.parsonsmatt.org/2019/08/30/why_functor_doesnt_matter.html https://www.parsonsmatt.org/2019/08/3

Because names don’t carry meaning, they’re pointers: https://www.parsonsmatt.org/2019/08/30/why_functor_doesnt_matter.html https://www.parsonsmatt.org/2019/08/30/why_functor_doesnt_ma... “Functor,” points to a specific concept in Haskell and a slightly different one in Category Theory but otherwise it is fairly unambiguous given enough context. The concept not only refers to the type and the associated “map” operation but also the axioms of identity and composition and their properties. “Mappable,” is a very common name people pick in these discussions but it doesn’t clarify the meaning any more than calling it “Rose.” It may in fact cause more harm than good if a name like Mappable exists in more contexts. There are plenty of objects one can apply a map operation to that are not valid Functors.

zozbot234 7y ago
Well, Functor is a bit of a misnomer; it really should be called TypeEndofunctor. The short form was really adopted as a mischievous pun on the use of "functor" in the OOP community.
- dllthomas 7y ago
  I don't think TypeEndofunctor conveys any additional information when discussing a Haskell typeclass. > The short form was really adopted as a mischievous pun on the use of "functor" in the OOP community. Citation needed.
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    I should note that naming things with mischievous puns certainly wasn't beyond early Haskellers - that's the origin of `return` as a name for part of the Monad interface (since quasi-deprecated in favor of `pure`). I just have never heard that allegation about `functor`, which seems to have been taken directly from mathematics that predate any notion of function object. It's possible that OO programmers and the mathematicians both borrowed it from the same source (it seems to have originated in linguistics).
justinmeiners 7y ago
> Because names don’t carry meaning, they’re pointers: That's been debated in philosophy for over 150 years, and there are many alternative theories. I think a better point is that technical names don't matter because their formal meaning may not correspond with any word, and if there is an everyday word, it's probably slightly but importantly different.

zozbot234 7y ago

Well, Functor is a bit of a misnomer; it really should be called TypeEndofunctor. The short form was really adopted as a mischievous pun on the use of "functor" in the OOP community.

dllthomas 7y ago
I don't think TypeEndofunctor conveys any additional information when discussing a Haskell typeclass. > The short form was really adopted as a mischievous pun on the use of "functor" in the OOP community. Citation needed.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  I should note that naming things with mischievous puns certainly wasn't beyond early Haskellers - that's the origin of `return` as a name for part of the Monad interface (since quasi-deprecated in favor of `pure`). I just have never heard that allegation about `functor`, which seems to have been taken directly from mathematics that predate any notion of function object. It's possible that OO programmers and the mathematicians both borrowed it from the same source (it seems to have originated in linguistics).

justinmeiners 7y ago

> Because names don’t carry meaning, they’re pointers: That's been debated in philosophy for over 150 years, and there are many alternative theories. I think a better point is that technical names don't matter because their formal meaning may not correspond with any word, and if there is an everyday word, it's probably slightly but importantly different.