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A list is a monad

(alexyorke.github.io)
153 points polygot | 2 comments | | HN request time: 0.001s | source
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brooke2k ◴[] No.44445948[source]
As far as monad tutorials go, this one seems quite good. I like the categorization of monads between "containers" and "recipes".

However, I personally think that monad tutorials tend to give people the wrong impression and leave them more confused than they were before, because they focus on the wrong thing.

A monad is not a complex concept, at all. IMO a more useful way to present the topic would be with one separate lesson for every common monad instance. Start with Maybe, then IO, then maybe State and List, and so on... because ultimately, every instance of a Monad works very differently. That's why the pattern is so useful in the first place, because it applies to so many places. (Note: this is a criticism of monad tutorials in general, not this one in particular, which seems to do a decent job on this front).

In my experience, people new to Haskell focus way too much on getting the "a-ha" moment for monads in general, when really you want a bunch of separate "a-ha" moments as you realize how each instance of a monad takes advantage of the pattern differently.

I also tend to think that monads are best demonstrated in Haskell rather than in other languages, if only because the notation is so much less clunky. That may just be me though. (EDIT: well, also because almost no other languages have typeclasses, so you have to approximate it with interfaces/traits/etc)

Also FYI: in part 2, the code examples have extra newlines in between every line, which makes it hard to read (I'm on firefox, if that matters).

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billmcneale ◴[] No.44447713[source]
> That's why the pattern is so useful in the first place

How useful, really? Monads don't even universally compose, which is what most people sell the concept for.

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1. lambdas ◴[] No.44449007[source]
Actions compose, types (generally) don’t. So Monad X and Monad Y may not make a valid Monad Z, but Kleisi composition very much exists for actions within a monad.
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2. billmcneale ◴[] No.44449109[source]
But the whole promise of monads is precisely that they are a type that can compose.

It basically allows you to pipe successive function calls returning different types by lifting these types into a monad.

Don't get me wrong, that promise is very powerful and in the rare few cases where it works, it unlocks beautiful composition, but the simple truth is that monads are really not that useful outside of Haskell (and I'd say, it's even questionable within).