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Computation in every higher-order, strict language has an intrinsic monadic structure. That includes pretty much every object-oriented language in existence. (I

Computation in every higher-order, strict language has an intrinsic monadic structure. That includes pretty much every object-oriented language in existence. (Ironically, it doesn't include Haskell.)

AnimalMuppet 10y ago
ELI5: What do you mean here by "higher-order"? And, by "intrinsic", do you mean that "the language does that, but the programmer doesn't have to do anything to make it happen, or even know"? If so, doesn't this contradict your answer to smaddox?
- catnaroek 10y ago
  > What do you mean here by "higher-order"? Procedures as first-class values that you can store in variables, pass as arguments to other procedures, etc. > And, by "intrinsic", do you mean that "the language does that, but the programmer doesn't have to do anything to make it happen, or even know"? Yes. Although, IMO, programmers benefit from knowing it, for more or less the same reasons civil engineers benefit from knowing the laws of nature. > If so, doesn't this contradict your answer to smaddox? No. Monads, as abstract type constructors, are already hardcoded into the result type of every computation. (This is the difference between, say, an int like “2”, and a computation that produces an int like “1 + 1” or “fix (\x -> x + 1)”.) So hardcoded, in fact, that there doesn't have to be syntax for it, because there's no way you can not say it.
- marcosdumay 10y ago
  I imagine the GP is talking about how code in procedural languages is equivalent to monadic code on pure languages. If so, I don't know why the "higher-order" restriction is there. It seems unneeded. Also, it about is as much something "the programmer doesn't have to do anything or even know" as monadic code on languages that have specialized syntactic sugar, like Haskell. It creates plenty of details the programmer has to think about, the only difference is that in procedural languages all the details are always there, while in pure ones the detail set changes all the time.
  - catnaroek 10y ago
    I'm not talking about “pure languages” (whatever that is) at all.

Computation in every higher-order, strict language has an intrinsic monadic structure. That includes pretty much every object-oriented language in existence. (Ironically, it doesn't include Haskell.)

AnimalMuppet 10y ago

ELI5: What do you mean here by "higher-order"? And, by "intrinsic", do you mean that "the language does that, but the programmer doesn't have to do anything to make it happen, or even know"? If so, doesn't this contradict your answer to smaddox?

catnaroek 10y ago
> What do you mean here by "higher-order"? Procedures as first-class values that you can store in variables, pass as arguments to other procedures, etc. > And, by "intrinsic", do you mean that "the language does that, but the programmer doesn't have to do anything to make it happen, or even know"? Yes. Although, IMO, programmers benefit from knowing it, for more or less the same reasons civil engineers benefit from knowing the laws of nature. > If so, doesn't this contradict your answer to smaddox? No. Monads, as abstract type constructors, are already hardcoded into the result type of every computation. (This is the difference between, say, an int like “2”, and a computation that produces an int like “1 + 1” or “fix (\x -> x + 1)”.) So hardcoded, in fact, that there doesn't have to be syntax for it, because there's no way you can not say it.
marcosdumay 10y ago
I imagine the GP is talking about how code in procedural languages is equivalent to monadic code on pure languages. If so, I don't know why the "higher-order" restriction is there. It seems unneeded. Also, it about is as much something "the programmer doesn't have to do anything or even know" as monadic code on languages that have specialized syntactic sugar, like Haskell. It creates plenty of details the programmer has to think about, the only difference is that in procedural languages all the details are always there, while in pure ones the detail set changes all the time.
- catnaroek 10y ago
  I'm not talking about “pure languages” (whatever that is) at all.