Partly. Tsuyoshi Ito's answer on that page is IMO better than the original: `head` mattered at a time when pattern matching didn't exist; but today the only reason to use `head` is to form some sort of pointfree expression operating on lists that you've already filtered to be not-null. That is, you're doing `map (transform . head) . takeWhile (not . null)` or something, or maybe `takeWhile` is replaced with `filter` or so. If you cannot assert that the list is non-null then you have to handle two branches, and this code will generally look clearer if you pull it into a `where` clause and write it with pattern matching rather than with an adjusted `head` followed immediately by an appropriate `maybe` function.