Rename Just to Something, as the counterpart to Nothing?

[Will White]

I'm talking about Maybe.Just, of course. Just has always seemed strange to me, as if it's hinting that it's something other than just the counterpart to Nothing. I don't know the reasons behind its naming, but I think I would prefer Something, as in "something or nothing". What do you think?

[Will White]

What's strange is that "Just 2" makes it sound like the alternative is "more than Just 2", the opposite of Nothing.

[Witold Szczerba]

Something would be too long in my opinion.

20.11.2016 6:16 PM "Will White" <will.n...@gmail.com> napisał(a):

I'm talking about Maybe.Just, of course. Just has always seemed strange to me, as if it's hinting that it's something other than just the counterpart to Nothing. I don't know the reasons behind its naming, but I think I would prefer Something, as in "something or nothing". What do you think?

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[Andrew Radford]

"Something 2" ?

I think the popular choices are Some/None and Just/Nothing. I wonder if there are any other better versions out there...

[Will White]

"Something 2" makes more sense to me in the context of Maybe than "Just 2".

[Nick H]

"Nothing" and "Just 2" are noun phrases. "Something 2" is nonsense, from a grammatical point of view.

How about we call it "The 2"?

--

[Wouter In t Velt]

Just (no pun intended) my 2c in favor of "Just":

• 4 versus 9 characters = lot more efficient
• The term "Just" makes no sense without a value. Which is correct.

The following snippet is readable, and looks allright, but it is wrong

case maybeValue of
  Something ->
    someFunction model

  Nothing ->
    model

[Robin Heggelund Hansen]

How about 'Some' and 'None'?

Those are not longer to type than what we have today, and they should solve your initial confusion.

[Martin DeMello]

I like Some and None, plus it'd be consistent with ocaml

martin

--

[Andrew Radford]

I dunno - I don't find either a clear winner over the other; years ago when I came across 'Just' I was a little confused because it's not strictly the opposite of 'nothing' when used in spoken English, it's normally used to also express there is a limitation at work, in the presence of a greater expectation. i.e it's a hungry man who says he has 'just peanuts' for lunch, rather than 'some peanuts'

On the other hand, 'Some' is kinda annoying cause it usually implies a plurality ie 'Some Peanut' sounds wrong.

There are probably spoken languages out there that have the perfect words for this concept. I'm not sure English is one of them.

On Sunday, 20 November 2016 23:54:04 UTC, Daniel Walker wrote:

`Just` seems the most natural to me. If I imagine myself explaining this to someone: "So in this scenario, the thing is not nothing, it's just the thing."

[Will White]

I thought “something or nothing” would be really good for quick understanding. If Something is really too long, how about Thing (vs Nothing)? Or if noun phrases really matter, how about Have or Got?

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[Will White]

I prefer Some or None, for understanding. Though, unless Evan didn’t know about them, I guess we’d already have them.

[Will White]

Sorry, meant to say “I guess he’s already considered and rejected them”.

[Andrew Radford]

Probably inherited from Haskell, like a lot of other stuff. Doubt if there was any other thought put into it if I'm honest.

[Joey Eremondi]

Honestly, these choices seem pretty arbitrary. Everyone has a preference. ML uses Some/None, Haskell uses Just/Nothing. Some people find Something intuitive, some don't.

Given that the choices is (mostly) arbitrary, it seems best to stick with the status quo.

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[Will White]

I think that’s because you already know what Just means. I don’t think it’s arbitrary though from an accessibility point of view. Some or None is easier for newcomers to understand than Just or Nothing, especially as Some isn’t misleading the way Just is, as Andrew described well.

[Noah Hall]

Has anyone actually encountered anyone being confused by the names? I
haven't. I think this a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

[Will White]

I remember being confused by Just, and I still find it awkward. Hearing Richard F. explain it in his introductory Elm talk is what prompted me to start this discussion.

[Joey Eremondi]

True, I like Just because I'm familiar with it. But its name isn't obvious. Some isn't obvious. Something isn't obvious.

There's really, two ways to understand Just. One is to listen to an explanation like what Richard gives. The other is to see the definition:

type Maybe a = Just a | Nothing.

A Maybe either contains an "a", which we call the "Just" case, or it contains no arguments, which we call "Nothing".

"Just" is a mnemonic. It's not the "meaning" of the constructor, it's just a handy name that lets us get at it. The meaning is the two cases above, the shape of the type. No name, no matter how informative, can capture that full meaning.

Honestly, if we're appealing to JS developers, and wanted to change the name, I'd say "Null" and "NotNull" are the two easiest. But I still prefer the status quo to this.

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[OvermindDL1]

I highly doubt it would ever be changed, but I significantly prefer the OCaml style Some/None to Haskell's Just/Nothing as well.

Although `Thing` and `NoThing` could by funny and descriptive both.  ^.^

[Peter Damoc]

On Mon, Nov 21, 2016 at 7:48 PM, Will White <will.n...@gmail.com> wrote:

I remember being confused by Just, and I still find it awkward.

 

It matters less if some other places call it Option and the cases have different names. 

If one cares about the idea and the things it allows, they will use it as it is and move on with the problem at hand.

There will always be people who arrive here with a different background. 
There is no way to accommodate all. 
So, the only sensible choice is for people accommodate themselves to Elm. 

I care less if it is "Some value" or "Just value". Both sound and express the idea equally well to me. 

I will use whatever is there. 

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There is NO FATE, we are the creators.
blog: http://damoc.ro/

[William Bailey]

type Maybe value = Some value | NoValue

[Will White]

I like that!

type Maybe thing = Some thing | Nothing

> On 21 Nov 2016, at 18:31, William Bailey <bi...@deepfinesse.com> wrote:
>
> type Maybe value = Some value | NoValue
>

[Oliver Searle-Barnes]

I have to admit I did find `Just` very confusing when I first encountered it, as mentioned earlier in this thread it implies some kind of limitation which doesn't match the semantics of Maybe at all. That said, it was one of those little oddities that very quickly become second nature, just wanted to point out that it is a slight bump in the road for newcomers.

[joseph ni]

I came to Elm not knowing about the Maybe type. 
The hardest thing for me to grasp was the use case and being able to map : (a -> b) -> Maybe a -> Maybe b. And knowing when to use a Maybe (rarely) vs when to use a union type or refactor the code so it doesn't need the Maybe type.

If I was to qualitatively estimate the amount of time spent learning about Maybe. I'd say it took me a moment to understand `Maybe a = Just a | Nothing` and a couple of months to get comfortable enough with the Maybe type now to understand where it's needed in my app.

So I'd tend to lean with Joey, the wording works for me and changing it would feel arbitrary and break the current grammatical 'symmetry' as in

weapon = Just sword 

vs
weapon = Something sword

[Will White]

weapon = Just sword doesn’t make sense for Maybe. It implies “just sword, out of all the weapons”. Just would make sense in a Just weapon | All (List weapon) type, where weapon could also be All [ sword, mace, nunchuk ]. 

I think we all agree that Nothing totally nails its concept (better than null for the uninitiated). I'm just looking for a word that implies its alternative is Nothing, e.g. Thing, Something. If it’s grammatically correct, that’s a bonus, but I think eliminating things which hinder understanding is more important.

[Oliver Searle-Barnes]

The problem with Some is that it should be A/An/Some depending on the subject. I'm starting to come round to Thing vs Nothing. While the grammer isn't spot on the semantics are very clear.

[Will White]

type Maybe thing = A thing | Nothing

So with List.head list I’d get A 2 or Nothing.

On 22 Nov 2016, at 10:20, Oliver Searle-Barnes <oli...@opsb.co.uk> wrote:

The problem with Some is that it should be A/An/Some depending on the subject. I'm starting to come round to Thing vs Nothing. While the grammer isn't spot on the semantics are very clear.

On Tuesday, 22 November 2016 11:06:10 UTC+1, Will White wrote:

weapon = Just sword doesn’t make sense for Maybe. It implies “just sword, out of all the weapons”. Just wouldmake sense in a Just weapon | All (List weapon) type, where weapon could also be All [ sword, mace, nunchuk ]. 

[Andrew Radford]

I think his point was if it was a Maybe List Int, then you would have

'A items'

It still seems English is not up to this task :) We should probably just make up a new word, start using it day to day, then have it included in the OED. If it can be done for 'selfie', then we could do it for <insert candidate here>

[Robin Heggelund Hansen]

'A itemList' ;-)

[Will White]

I see.

We’re happy using the ungrammatical Ok a for Results, so why not Thing a for Maybes?

[David Andrews]

I don't think it really works for this, but the natural definition for Maybe would seem to be

Maybe a = Yes a | No

I see.

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[Nick H]

OK, here are the suggestions so far:

type Maybe a = ...

Nothing | Just a
Nothing | Something a
None | Some a
NoValue | Some a
Nothing | Some a
Nothing | The a
Nothing | A a
Nothing | Thing a
NoThing | Thing a
Nothing | Have a
Nothing | Got a
Null | NotNull a
No | Yes a

Empty | Full a

(I just added that last one.)

[Daniel Walker]

My opinion on this isn't nothing, it's just that just makes the most sense.

[Rex van der Spuy]

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016 at 12:15:50 PM UTC-5, Daniel Walker wrote:

My opinion on this isn't nothing, it's just that just makes the most sense.

Maybe.

 

[Daniel Walker]

:)

[Erkal Selman]

I don't have a strong opinion about this issue, but here is why Just makes sense to me:

Say that you have the type Maybe Int.

A value of this type can be Nothing, or it can be, for example, Just 42.

It  cannot be Error 42 or Person 42, it can be just 42.

[Will White]

The fact that you have to have a way of making sense of it is exactly my point. I think if it was Thing a | Nothing you wouldn’t have to do this to understand it.

[Erkal Selman]

Thing a | Nothing is also my favourite between the proposed ones.

If the type label is thought of as an adjactive, like for example, in

type Entry = Male Person | Female Person 

then Just makes more sense.

However, my observation is that these type labels are more often named after nouns, like in

type Angle = Radian Float | Degree Float

In this case, Thing is makes more sense.

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[Mark Hamburg]

It didn't take any adaptation that I recall to get used to Just and Nothing. In fact, I probably made more errors on Nothing.

But if there were a real move to rename the cases to be more "friendly" — which I doubt — then I will offer the colloquially friendly:

Maybe a = Yep a | Nope

Yes/No would be better and would be proper answers to the question implied by Maybe, but they are also more likely to already be in use.

I think Just/Nothing probably just survives.

Mark

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 3:50 PM Erkal Selman <erkal...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thing a | Nothing is also my favourite between the proposed ones.

If the type label is thought of as an adjactive, like for example, in

type Entry = Male Person | Female Person 

then Just makes more sense.

However, my observation is that these type labels are more often named after nouns, like in

type Angle = Radian Float | Degree Float

In this case, Thing is makes more sense.

On Wed, Nov 23, 2016 at 11:19 PM, Will White <will.n...@gmail.com> wrote:

The fact that you have to have a way of making sense of it is exactly my point. I think if it was Thing a | Nothing you wouldn’t have to do this to understand it.

On 23 Nov 2016, at 22:01, Erkal Selman <erkal...@gmail.com> wrote:

I don't have a strong opinion about this issue, but here is why Just makes sense to me:

Say that you have the type Maybe Int.

A value of this type can be Nothing, or it can be, for example, Just 42.

It  cannot be Error 42 or Person 42, it can be just 42.

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016 at 7:06:14 PM UTC+1, Daniel Walker wrote:

:)

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016 at 10:59:24 AM UTC-7, Rex van der Spuy wrote:

On Wednesday, November 23, 2016 at 12:15:50 PM UTC-5, Daniel Walker wrote:

My opinion on this isn't nothing, it's just that just makes the most sense.

Maybe.

 

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[Michael B]

Maybe a = Nothing | Such a

elm = Such wow

[Witold Szczerba]

I have it, I have it, look at this:

type Maybe a = Nothing | Maybe a

It's very popular to name constructor after type in many languages.

case msg of
Maybe This -> ...
Maybe That -> ...
Nothing -> ...

Also, "Just" is just fine as well.

24.11.2016 10:21 PM "Michael B" <mbyl...@gmail.com> napisał(a):

Maybe a = Nothing | Such a

elm = Such wow

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[Zinggi]

I love this!

I've read through the whole thread, but for every suggestion so far I thought: "meh, 'Just a' sounds better".

But this looks even better!

On Friday, 25 November 2016 10:03:54 UTC+1, Witold Szczerba wrote:

I have it, I have it, look at this:

type Maybe a = Nothing | Maybe a

It's very popular to name constructor after type in many languages.

case msg of
Maybe This -> ...
Maybe That -> ...
Nothing -> ...

Also, "Just" is just fine as well.

24.11.2016 10:21 PM "Michael B" <mbyl...@gmail.com> napisał(a):

Maybe a = Nothing | Such a

elm = Such wow

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[Joey Eremondi]

type Maybe a = Nothing | Maybe a

To me this makes no sense. Maybe implies uncertainty: it's either there or it's not. But in the case that it's there, there's no uncertainty. Maybe 3 isn't uncertain, we know that the value is there. The uncertainty is in the type, before you pattern match, when there's two possibilities. The name should reflect which possibility it is.

Also, new people already have enough problems confusing the Type and Constructor namespaces, this would make that worse.

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[Tyler Perkins]

Agreed! Back when I started learning Haskell, I was delighted how a Maybe t could be a Just t or Nothing. The choice of names was perfect: succinct, colloquial, yet precise. The problem, I think, is that novices use numbers for toy examples, so "Just 3" is read as "no greater than 3". But when you realize that x can be any type, "Just x" clearly means "just this one thing, x, with nothing else happening".

Later, I learned that Scala's Option[T] type (a much more overloaded name than "Maybe") used Some[T] and None. Yuk!, I thought. "Some" has a conflicting set theory meaning, "at least one". And "None" means "cardinality of zero", both of which could mislead you to think we're talking about a collection of arbitrary size, not just 0 or 1. That's imprecise terminology.

Some say they were confused by Just, thinking maybe the alternative to Just t might be more-than-one-t" rather than Nothing. Yes, the alternative could be more than one, but that would be a different type. That's the point, isn't it? A type is a description, and you need to read the whole description. Sometimes, being confused is a good thing! The Maybe type was a new concept to you, and that state of confusion was your subconscious mind telling you that some hard thinking was required. There's no getting away from that!

On Monday, November 21, 2016 at 10:34:05 AM UTC-7, Noah Hall wrote:

Has anyone actually encountered anyone being confused by the names? I
haven't. I think this a solution to a problem that doesn't exist.

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[Duane Johnson]

On Fri, Nov 25, 2016 at 3:49 PM, Joey Eremondi <joey.e...@gmail.com> wrote:

To me this makes no sense. Maybe implies uncertainty: it's either there or it's not.

I think the beauty Witold was pointing to is in the way the `case` statement reads, not the way the type reads on its own. Reading "case of maybe this, or maybe that" made the suggestion make sense to me.

That said, how about "Is"?

type Maybe a = Is a | Nothing

case msg of

    Is This -> ...

    Is That -> ...

    Nothing -> ...

To be or not to be... that is the question :)

Duane

[Will White]

This is what it comes down to for me:

Richard F talking about Maybes: https://youtu.be/IcgmSRJHu_8?t=9m21s

He says "those will go from a series of Nothings to a series of Justs".

Thing a | Nothing would mean he'd say "those will go from a series of Nothings to a series of Things" which makes more sense with the semantics of Maybe and which makes more sense to the uninitiated listener.

[Will White]

“those will go from a series of No’s to a series of Yes’s” would also make sense.

[Will White]

“Nopes to Yeps” Thanks Mark.