I recently started studying functional programming using Haskell and came upon this article on the official Haskell wiki: How to read Haskell.
The article claims that short variable names such as x
, xs
, and f
are fitting for Haskell code, because of conciseness and abstraction. In essence, it claims that functional programming is such a distinct paradigm that the naming conventions from other paradigms don't apply.
What are your thoughts on this?
In Haskell, meaning is conveyed less with variable names than with types. Being purely functional has the advantage of being able to ask for the type of any expression, regardless of context.