Xah Lee wrote:
«
The Concepts and Confusions of Prefix, Infix, Postfix and Fully
Functional Notations
http://xahlee.org/UnixResource_dir/writ/notations.html
...
For another example, suppose Deriv is a function that takes a function
f and returns a function g, and we want to apply g to a variable x.
In lisp, we would write “((Deriv f) x)”. In Mathematica, we would
write “Deriv[f][x]”.»

On Aug 17, 10:53 am, Xah Lee xahlee.org> wrote:

You have a point in that this is incorrect. Currying, named after
Haskell Curry, has to do with transforming a function of N arguments
into a function of N-K arguments, by fixing the values of K arguments.

What the above describes is something else. But I don't think that
``high powered'' people who know what they are talking about would
misuse the term in that way.

I'm a low-powered hacker and don't even know what I'm talking about
half the time, yet I still know what currying is.

Xah Lee xahlee.org> schrieb:

You might want to say "schönfinkeln," as we do here in Germany.

Florian Kreidler schrieb:

Only humorously, if at all.
Well, some teachers pass on unusual terms in a vain attempt to establish
a terminology that they think would be better.

Regards,
Jo

... just to have some fun, let me make a assertion (fun aside, i
seriously think it true):

The Haskell community, would benefit greatly (say, as tripling its
popularity or number of users), by forbidding literature associated
with its teaching, of using the term Currying.

This is something that can be done, and in my opinion, trivially.
However, of course it will never happens because haskell is too much
tied to academics and social and human issues regarding terminology or
the use of English, is not likely to change...

As to what would be better term for Currying... umm... perhaps Arity
Shrink, Arity Collapsing, parameter reduction ...

See also:
Politics and the English Language by George Orwell
http://xahlee.org/p/george_orwell_english.html

Xah
xah@xahlee.org
∑ http://xahlee.org/

--------
On Aug 17, 10:53 am,XahLeexahlee.org> wrote:

Xah Lee schrieb:

Technically that would be easy, but politically, it's impossible to ban
certain words. To establish a working ban, you'd need a censoring
machinery, and the side effects would eclipse any good that this could
ever do.

All you can do is to propose a less intimidating nomenclature.

Xah Lee xahlee.org> wrote:

Even when teaching the meaning of the standard library routines "curry"
and "uncurry"?

Joachim Durchholz wrote:

When cooking a curry, you need a bunch of ingredients. You throw some
stuff into the pot. You now have something that when you add
more ingredients, makes more a more complicated/closer-to-complete
curry. You can separate making a curry into a whole heap of
add-a-thing-to-the-pot operations.

Okay that's pretty loose, and if anything probably encourages
currying/partial-application confusion, but still, the name
"curry" always appealed to me for that reason.

Joachim Durchholz durchholz.org> writes:

But it's been done:

http://saxophone.jpberlin.de/MonadTransformer?source=http%%3A%%2F%%2Fwww%%2Ehask...

Joachim Durchholz durchholz.org> writes:

You could as well ban the word "Xah Lee" and xahleeing, like google
tries to ban googling...

Please people, stop xahleeing!

--
__Pascal Bourguignon__ http://www.informatimago.com/