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Your explanation does not justify the choice. They were tasked with communicating with other academics who were already using the term "class" in the field of programming language research.

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To be blunt, it doesn't need to be justified. Should I call cars horseless carriages simply because that was the original term? Have you seen how bad the situation is in mathematics where the exact same concept has multiple names? This isn't a unique thing to have happen. Nor one to fret this much over.

The haskell committee were concerned with conveying knowledge amongst functional programming researchers. The use of class in similar but unrelated fields doesn't mean everyone need use it.

If you call a fish a "car" don't be surprised when people get confused and think that choice of name was ill-advised. Car is already in use, don't use car to describe a fish, it's not difficult. When a word has an accepted meaning, using that word to convey an entirely different meaning where you could easily choose something else is ridiculous. It is right to criticise anyone who does something so silly.

Or you can think I'm just flying the mountain with ice cream windows if you like.

It depends whether you care about catering to a general audience.

Lisp got away with an entirely different meaning for “car” for a pretty long time!

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