If you are hired at a company exclusively doing Haskell there is no way you haven't seen <$>, <*>, or (,) before. In this case, the reason the OP didn't think

If you are hired at a company exclusively doing Haskell there is no way you haven't seen <$>, <*>, or (,) before. In this case, the reason the OP didn't think of writing it with Applicative isn't because he didn't know about them (I assume), but just because he didn't think to use it in that particular case.