4 ms·

> Lifting is a concept which allows you to transform a function into a corresponding function within another (usually more general) setting. What's there not t

by weavie 9y ago

> Lifting is a concept which allows you to transform a function into a corresponding function within another (usually more general) setting. What's there not to understand? :)

robotmay 9y ago
Yeah that bit was alright, it was everything after that I struggled with ;) As an example; I don't know what a functor is. I've not come across that term in anything I've done before, so I click on it to read up and get the definition: "The Functor typeclass represents the mathematical functor: a mapping between categories in the context of category theory. In practice a functor represents a type that can be mapped over.", which uh, doesn't really help. I only did mathematics to GCSE level here in the UK, during which I never came across most of the terms used frequently in Haskell's documentation :D There's a lack of examples of "real-world" usage in Haskell. e.g. here's how you'd use lifting, in a practical example. e.g. why is lifting a thing and what possible uses does it have when writing an application? Because to my knowledge I've never done it before, so why is it good? Thankfully my friend sent me this: http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_..., which is a much better explanation. It's probably due to a difference in my background (predominantly web, applications, self-taught etc) and the more academic history of Haskell, but I find the vast majority of examples irrelevant. Luckily there are a -few- books/tutorials around that explain the language more clearly and why I might want to write software with it. It's a shame because it looks like a really cool language, but it is seriously hard to get into. Whereas with Rust, it just kinda makes sense to me.
- weavie 9y ago
  I did mathematics to first year university level and didn't come across any of the terms used in Haskells. Our programmers group is currently working through category theory with - https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers-the-preface/ https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-p... - and a lot of it is utterly bewildering, but at least I am starting to understand some of what Haskell is going on about. As for real world usage, however, I still have a long way to go...

by weavie 9y ago

> Lifting is a concept which allows you to transform a function into a corresponding function within another (usually more general) setting. What's there not to understand? :)

robotmay 9y ago

Yeah that bit was alright, it was everything after that I struggled with ;) As an example; I don't know what a functor is. I've not come across that term in anything I've done before, so I click on it to read up and get the definition: "The Functor typeclass represents the mathematical functor: a mapping between categories in the context of category theory. In practice a functor represents a type that can be mapped over.", which uh, doesn't really help. I only did mathematics to GCSE level here in the UK, during which I never came across most of the terms used frequently in Haskell's documentation :D There's a lack of examples of "real-world" usage in Haskell. e.g. here's how you'd use lifting, in a practical example. e.g. why is lifting a thing and what possible uses does it have when writing an application? Because to my knowledge I've never done it before, so why is it good? Thankfully my friend sent me this: http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_monads_in_pictures.html http://adit.io/posts/2013-04-17-functors,_applicatives,_and_..., which is a much better explanation. It's probably due to a difference in my background (predominantly web, applications, self-taught etc) and the more academic history of Haskell, but I find the vast majority of examples irrelevant. Luckily there are a -few- books/tutorials around that explain the language more clearly and why I might want to write software with it. It's a shame because it looks like a really cool language, but it is seriously hard to get into. Whereas with Rust, it just kinda makes sense to me.

weavie 9y ago
I did mathematics to first year university level and didn't come across any of the terms used in Haskells. Our programmers group is currently working through category theory with - https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers-the-preface/ https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-p... - and a lot of it is utterly bewildering, but at least I am starting to understand some of what Haskell is going on about. As for real world usage, however, I still have a long way to go...