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Consider updating misleading Alt documentation

Open hdgarrood opened this issue 4 years ago • 2 comments

The Alt documentation says:

The Alt type class identifies an associative operation on a type constructor. It is similar to Semigroup, except that it applies to types of kind * -> *, like Array or List, rather than concrete types like String or Number.

I think this is misleading because my understanding of the phrase "concrete type" is that it refers to a specific, named type, as opposed to a type variable. So I would say that Array, List, String, and Number are all concrete. The important point here is just to distinguish types of kind Type with types of kind Type -> Type, so I'd suggest just saying that, and avoiding the word "concrete".

hdgarrood avatar Jan 31 '21 14:01 hdgarrood

Does this proposal include expanding:

types of kind * -> *

to:

types of kind Type -> Type

?

milesfrain avatar Jun 26 '21 19:06 milesfrain

Yes, * is just the old name for Type

hdgarrood avatar Jun 26 '21 22:06 hdgarrood