[tsimionescu]

I'm not claiming + and = have some underlying meaning, of course they were taught. My main point is that symbols are only truly useful when they are ubiquitous in their field. Before that, they are obscure and should be avoided.

If the Haskell community or the Lenses community wants to do the hard work of teaching everyone their new symbols, go right ahead. Until that work is done though, I would advice everyone to avoid using these symbols.

In regards to the vinculum, it's true that I've never heard that name, but I learned different names for the different uses - not in English though, as I took mathematics in Romanian, and some of the terminology and even notation is not the same (for example, repeated fractions are denoted using parentheses, not a vinculum - as in 1/30 = 0.0(3)).

[ablob]

> Before that, they are obscure and should be avoided.

Then how, if I might ask, is a symbol going to become ubiquitous, if it is not to be used while it is still obscure?