Create FAQ

[ceedubs]

There are certain questions that come up repeatedly on Gitter. I think we should create a FAQ for easy reference. Even if it doesn't prevent the questions from coming up, it should at least provide an easy explanation to link to instead of repeating a previous conversation.

Some common questions that come to mind:

• What imports do I need for <x>? (see also document imports #912)
• Why am I still getting an error message about an implicit not being found even though I've imported Future instances? (see also Misleading error for type class instances related to Future #670)
• How is cats different than scalaz? (cats/scalaz migration guide #82 is somewhat relevant, but I think we also need to provide a little insight into cats' raison d'être)
• How do I turn my list of <x> into an <x> of a list? (see also this and this)
• I'm new to FP. Any recommended resources for learning more?
  • @tpolecat has a recommended reading list on his site that has some good suggestions.
  • @jducoeur has recommended How to Bake Pi by Dr. Eugenia Cheng as an introduction to category theory.
• I'm new to cats, but I'd like to contribute. How can I help?
• Where is Task/IO? (Add IO/Task section to FAQ #1227)
• Where is ListT? (Add ListT section to FAQ #1226)

[hamishdickson]

Would this be a good place to add something about the use of kind projector in the docs? Or would that be better placed in the docs themselves?

[ceedubs]

@hamishdickson I'm inclined to think that we should use type aliases instead of kind-projector in the docs wherever possible so we aren't throwing multiple things at people at once. If there are any docs that do need to use kind-projector, then I think we should have a message in front of the first usage.

[hamishdickson]

👍 thats a much better idea

[ceedubs]

@hamishdickson I created #1033.

[yilinwei]

I think it would be awesome to have a glossary of operators for symbols such as |@| or >>=.

[ceedubs]

I'll work on this.

[OlivierBlanvillain]

The scala doc could be used a symbol index: http://typelevel.org/cats/api/#index.index-_

[jducoeur]

I should note that How to Bake Pi isn't an introduction to FP (or any kind of programming, really), it's an introduction to Category Theory in the math sense. So it makes an excellent grounding in "what the heck are you all talking about?". It's especially good for people who already know programming but don't know any category theory. (Which is most programmers.)

[ceedubs]

@jducoeur good point. I'll add some clarification.