Stephen Tetley wrote:
2009/11/13 Rafael Gustavo da Cunha Pereira Pinto <rafaelgcpp.li...@gmail.com>:
Monoid is the category of all types that have a empty value and an append
operation.
Or more generally a neutral element and an associative operation:
The multiplication monoid (1,*)
9*1*1*1 = 9
1 is neutral but you might be hard pressed to consider it _empty_.
This is the thing. If we had a class specifically for containers, that
could be useful. If we had a class specifically for algebras, that could
be useful. But a class that represents "any possible thing that can
technically be considered a monoid" seems so absurdly general as to be
almost useless. If you don't know what an operator *does*, being able to
abstract over it isn't especially helpful...
...in my humble opinion. (Which, obviously, nobody else will agree with.)
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