> "Monoid", to someone who hasn't studied abstract algebra... Oh come on, man! I can't believe this ridiculous discussion. I'm not lashing out at you, don't

> "Monoid", to someone who hasn't studied abstract algebra... Oh come on, man! I can't believe this ridiculous discussion. I'm not lashing out at you, don't get me wrong, but seriously, you think you need to study abstract algebra to understand what a monoid is? Um, I remember one of the first things mentioned in the, literally, first lecture in undergraduate course on calculus was a monoid, among other algebraic structures. Granted, it was theoretical physics, but still, I doubt any respectable university teaching CS would fail to give students at least some familiarity with basic algebraic structures. But you don't even need a university education to grasp this, seriously, stop being afraid of precise terms, there's nothing scary behind them. EDIT: And to actually address your point :), "intuitive" can only go so far. Sometimes there is simply no intuitive term that can do justice to the concept at hand. As Feynman once said: "I'm not going to lie to you, I'm not going to tell you it's like a ball bearing on a spring because it isn't." Especially in programming I'm not convinced that intuitiveness of a mere label for something is a valuable goal. You can't program on intuition, at some point you just have to learn how the thing really works.