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This article might do better by actually explaining what a monad is in layman’s terms, rather than deferring the reader to Wikipedia via a footnote. I read 1/3

This article might do better by actually explaining what a monad is in layman’s terms, rather than deferring the reader to Wikipedia via a footnote. I read 1/3 of the article hoping to gain an understanding but gave up and didn’t read further :(

amelius 8y ago
http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monads-and.html http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monad...
leshow 8y ago
There are a million and a half monad blogs out there. I, for one, am happy not to have to read another "a monad is..." blog post.
ivanbakel 8y ago
That's because it's a technical article about monad implementation, building on previous technical discussion. The author could spend time explaining what monads are, but that's a notoriously tricky thing to teach, and if you don't understand them fully, the article as a whole won't be worth anything to you anyways.
- eatbitseveryday 8y ago
  Perhaps the author could have put such a disclaimer? "Note: it is beyond the scope of this blog post to explain what a monad is. Please refer to x,y,z for background material." Anyway, I understand.
  - Certhas 8y ago
    The article says in the introduction: > I am going to be assuming some familiarity with monads (and to a certain extent, do notation). There are enough introductions to monads out there as it is.
skocznymroczny 8y ago
monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors
- cesarb 8y ago
  > monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors For those who hadn't seen this before, here's an explanation: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3870088/a-monad-is-just-a-monoid-in-the-category-of-endofunctors-whats-the-problem https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3870088/a-monad-is-just-...
  - deathanatos 8y ago
    That quote is linked to in the article. (At "Famously", under "Functors".)
mruts 8y ago
There already are way too many articles explaining monads on the internet. For some reason, it's many bloggers favorite subject. But I'll give it a go, I suppose. A functor is a type that represents turning something into something else. For example, for example turning a List<Int> into a List<Double>. A monad is a functor that also has a bind or flatMap method attached to it. Both essentially allow you flatten or "chain" the values inside. So the monad defines a way to map things (inherited from functors), and flatten things (via bind or flatMap depending on how you want to define it). Also you need applicatives, which is just a way to box things. i.e turning a Int into a List<Int>. There are also some laws associated with them, but you probably get the idea. Examples of useful monads: lists, options, futures, database transactions, logging, parsing, etc.
- nybble41 8y ago
  > Also you need applicatives, which is just a way to box things. i.e turning a Int into a List<Int>. Applicative functions do have that property, but their key attribute is the ability to two things together, e.g. turning a List<Int> and a List<Double> into a List<Pair<Int,Double>>. A functor which also has the ability to put arbitrary things into the functor context, but not the ability to combine two contexts, is sometimes referred to as a pointed functor. (There is no official Haskell typeclass for pointed functors; the main reason, besides historical baggage, is that non-applicative pointed functors don't have any real laws aside from the ones which apply to functors.) Applicatives are sufficient for sequencing effects but the List<Double> in the previous example can't depend on the Int values in the List<Int>. This is great for static analysis of effects but it limits the kinds of programs you can write to those whose effects are known in advance. A monad lifts this restriction and allows effects (not just values) to be computed dynamically from the values of prior effects. Finite[1] applicative parsers can only parse context-free languages. Monadic parsers, on the other hand, can handle context-sensitive languages (without resorting to an infinite set of production rules). [1] https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/parsing-context-sensitive-languages-with-applicative/ https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/parsing-context-sen...
zackmorris 8y ago
I agree with eatbitseveryday and don't think that this should have been downvoted. I've tried to learn some of the more esoteric concepts in computer science (like monads, and ycombinators for that matter) but eventually forget how they work each time. Personally, I think that monads are a sore spot for functional programmers, because they are the crux of why FP runs into difficulties in the real world when dealing with things like mutable state, side effects and logic that happens over multiple steps (imperatively). Here is a relatively nontechnical discussion about how monads bridge functional and imperative programming, by treating IO sort of like an imaginary number that can be passed along as a black box until it can finally be computed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19040455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19040455
- mruts 8y ago
  Monads in my experience are less likely used for IO than people think. Of course Haskell developers use monads in this way, but OCaml and Scala programmers generally avoid this. Instead monads are used to unify the foundation of many types: options, lists, trees, etc. Also monads are really nice for futures and parsers. The point I’m trying to make I guess is that monads are very useful for other things than dealing with impurity, which I think a lot of people just learning them miss.

amelius 8y ago

http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monads-and.html http://blog.sigfpe.com/2006/08/you-could-have-invented-monad...

leshow 8y ago

There are a million and a half monad blogs out there. I, for one, am happy not to have to read another "a monad is..." blog post.

ivanbakel 8y ago

That's because it's a technical article about monad implementation, building on previous technical discussion. The author could spend time explaining what monads are, but that's a notoriously tricky thing to teach, and if you don't understand them fully, the article as a whole won't be worth anything to you anyways.

eatbitseveryday 8y ago
Perhaps the author could have put such a disclaimer? "Note: it is beyond the scope of this blog post to explain what a monad is. Please refer to x,y,z for background material." Anyway, I understand.
- Certhas 8y ago
  The article says in the introduction: > I am going to be assuming some familiarity with monads (and to a certain extent, do notation). There are enough introductions to monads out there as it is.

skocznymroczny 8y ago

monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors

cesarb 8y ago
> monad is a monoid in the category of endofunctors For those who hadn't seen this before, here's an explanation: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3870088/a-monad-is-just-a-monoid-in-the-category-of-endofunctors-whats-the-problem https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3870088/a-monad-is-just-...
- deathanatos 8y ago
  That quote is linked to in the article. (At "Famously", under "Functors".)

mruts 8y ago

There already are way too many articles explaining monads on the internet. For some reason, it's many bloggers favorite subject. But I'll give it a go, I suppose. A functor is a type that represents turning something into something else. For example, for example turning a List<Int> into a List<Double>. A monad is a functor that also has a bind or flatMap method attached to it. Both essentially allow you flatten or "chain" the values inside. So the monad defines a way to map things (inherited from functors), and flatten things (via bind or flatMap depending on how you want to define it). Also you need applicatives, which is just a way to box things. i.e turning a Int into a List<Int>. There are also some laws associated with them, but you probably get the idea. Examples of useful monads: lists, options, futures, database transactions, logging, parsing, etc.

nybble41 8y ago
> Also you need applicatives, which is just a way to box things. i.e turning a Int into a List<Int>. Applicative functions do have that property, but their key attribute is the ability to two things together, e.g. turning a List<Int> and a List<Double> into a List<Pair<Int,Double>>. A functor which also has the ability to put arbitrary things into the functor context, but not the ability to combine two contexts, is sometimes referred to as a pointed functor. (There is no official Haskell typeclass for pointed functors; the main reason, besides historical baggage, is that non-applicative pointed functors don't have any real laws aside from the ones which apply to functors.) Applicatives are sufficient for sequencing effects but the List<Double> in the previous example can't depend on the Int values in the List<Int>. This is great for static analysis of effects but it limits the kinds of programs you can write to those whose effects are known in advance. A monad lifts this restriction and allows effects (not just values) to be computed dynamically from the values of prior effects. Finite[1] applicative parsers can only parse context-free languages. Monadic parsers, on the other hand, can handle context-sensitive languages (without resorting to an infinite set of production rules). [1] https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/parsing-context-sensitive-languages-with-applicative/ https://byorgey.wordpress.com/2012/01/05/parsing-context-sen...

zackmorris 8y ago

I agree with eatbitseveryday and don't think that this should have been downvoted. I've tried to learn some of the more esoteric concepts in computer science (like monads, and ycombinators for that matter) but eventually forget how they work each time. Personally, I think that monads are a sore spot for functional programmers, because they are the crux of why FP runs into difficulties in the real world when dealing with things like mutable state, side effects and logic that happens over multiple steps (imperatively). Here is a relatively nontechnical discussion about how monads bridge functional and imperative programming, by treating IO sort of like an imaginary number that can be passed along as a black box until it can finally be computed: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19040455 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19040455

mruts 8y ago
Monads in my experience are less likely used for IO than people think. Of course Haskell developers use monads in this way, but OCaml and Scala programmers generally avoid this. Instead monads are used to unify the foundation of many types: options, lists, trees, etc. Also monads are really nice for futures and parsers. The point I’m trying to make I guess is that monads are very useful for other things than dealing with impurity, which I think a lot of people just learning them miss.