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You are right, but no beginner truly understands do notation. It's just magic to them. Do notation is an abstraction on top of monads which is an incredibly har

You are right, but no beginner truly understands do notation. It's just magic to them. Do notation is an abstraction on top of monads which is an incredibly hard to understand abstraction on top of functional programming. Functional programming in essence does not allow procedures, but with special incredibly complex abstractions you can simulate procedures. If you program using said abstractions I would argue that it makes functional programming even Harder to understand.

platz 10y ago
Look, I'm not saying Haskell is easy to learn, it's one of the steepest learning curves I know of in programming. But I don't think do notation is what trips up beginners (not sure if this discussion is about beginners per se). It is explained by simple mechanical plug-and-chug transformations that I think beginners understand, but am willing to hear if there is evidence otherwise.. I just think it's the other things that will eventually trip them up (I was only responding to specific claims made earlier). Also, on the point of resting on abstractions being a problem, I don't find compelling, because I'm also sure that Python beginners don't understand what "class MyStuff(object):" is really doing, but if the abstraction isn't leaky try don't need to know right away, and they can delve later.
mathw 10y ago
I never found monads particularly difficult. I still don't understand what the problem is with them. It's just a box with some "stuff" in, a function that makes a new box with a thing inside, and a function that takes a box and a value and gives you a new box with some different stuff inside. The hardest part for me was accepting that I can't look inside the box and don't actually need to. I do get that there are a lot of people who'll look at monads and want to know why the heck they should bother when any "decent" or "reasonable" language just lets all their functions crap all over the filesystem whenever they like.

platz 10y ago

Look, I'm not saying Haskell is easy to learn, it's one of the steepest learning curves I know of in programming. But I don't think do notation is what trips up beginners (not sure if this discussion is about beginners per se). It is explained by simple mechanical plug-and-chug transformations that I think beginners understand, but am willing to hear if there is evidence otherwise.. I just think it's the other things that will eventually trip them up (I was only responding to specific claims made earlier). Also, on the point of resting on abstractions being a problem, I don't find compelling, because I'm also sure that Python beginners don't understand what "class MyStuff(object):" is really doing, but if the abstraction isn't leaky try don't need to know right away, and they can delve later.

mathw 10y ago

I never found monads particularly difficult. I still don't understand what the problem is with them. It's just a box with some "stuff" in, a function that makes a new box with a thing inside, and a function that takes a box and a value and gives you a new box with some different stuff inside. The hardest part for me was accepting that I can't look inside the box and don't actually need to. I do get that there are a lot of people who'll look at monads and want to know why the heck they should bother when any "decent" or "reasonable" language just lets all their functions crap all over the filesystem whenever they like.