Would be great to see a 'Why?' section for each entry

[dflock]

Ok, so you've explained... currying or functors. Great. But why would I want to curry a function? What's the benefit of doing that? How is it used in the real world?

[jethrolarson]

That's a great question but one that's better served by a blog article than a glossary. I remember this being a decent explanation http://fr.umio.us/favoring-curry

[hemanth]

Maybe this is a good candidate for the wiki?

[dflock]

Thanks for that link @jethrolarson - nice explanation.

Maybe each entry could have a 'Read More' section, with links to further reading, Wikipedia articles, blogs, the Wiki here, etc...?

[jethrolarson]

Yeah, maybe if we can keep it curated and not overwhelming

On Tue, Jul 26, 2016, 9:13 AM Duncan Lock notifications@github.com wrote:

Thanks for that link @jethrolarson https://github.com/jethrolarson -
nice explanation.

Maybe each entry could have a 'Read More' section, with links to further
reading, Wikipedia articles, blogs, the Wiki here, etc...?

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[Alhadis]

But a curried version behaves more usefully:

formatName1("John", "Paul");
//=> "John Paul undefined");
formatName1("John", "Paul")("Jones");
//=> "John Paul Jones"

Ｅ Ｐ Ｉ Ｐ Ｈ Ａ Ｎ Ｙ

[jethrolarson]

Your response inspired me to add a link to the article to the curry section

[Alhadis]

To be honest, I was asking the same question as the OP for a long time until I read that article. I think a lot of confusion about currying can be attributed to being too conditioned to imperative languages. A C or JavaScript programmer is probably inclined to see a function as any grouped set of instructions, whereas in purely-functional programming languages, things are built quite differently...

It's all about engaging with a whole new mindset, which is I've grown so interested in functional programming (and top kudos to this repo, SERIOUSLY). I'm too damn used to JavaScript, hahaha.

[Alhadis]

BTW, here's a practical use for currying in JavaScript I wrote. =)

/**
 * Curried method to append multiple nodes at once.
 *
 * @example addTo(node)(el1, el2, …)
 * @example node = addTo(node)(…)[0]
 * @return {Function}
 */
function addTo(parent){
    let count = 0;
    let target = parent;

    const fn = (...nodes) => {
        let lastElement;

        for(let node of nodes){
            if("string" === typeof node)
                node = document.createTextNode(node);
            else
                lastElement =
                fn[++count] = node;
            target.appendChild(node);
        }

        target = lastElement || target;
        return fn;
    };
    fn[count] = target;
    return fn;
}

So to produce the following HTML...

<header id="top">
    <h1>
        <a class="permalink" href="#top">
            Heading
        </a>
    </h1>
</header>

... you'd use:

addTo(document.body)
    (New("header", {id: "top"}))
    (New("h1"))
    (New("a", {className: "permalink", href: "#top"}))
    ("Heading");

(This example uses my beloved New function to generate HTML elements easily).

Hope this helps somebody! Let me know if my curry-cooking sucks!

[jethrolarson]

I think we should address the "Why" via links either to the wiki or to external resources. We've done that for curry and a couple others. Ensuring that every term has a approachable "why" would be quite the undertaking so I think we should address those in individual issues/PRs.

We could track this as an initiative and tag the issues/PRs with a "Why" tag. Either way I think this issue is a little too open ended to be left open indefinitely. If there are specific terms that you really want to see a motivation for feel free to open a issue specific to that term.

[Alhadis]

Hey @jethrolarson, I'm still waiting for you to answer. =)