3 ms·

I think most of this happens because lots of people say things like "the IO monad" when they actually just mean "IO". It misleads people into thinking the mona

I think most of this happens because lots of people say things like "the IO monad" when they actually just mean "IO". It misleads people into thinking the monad part is important. It isn't. IO is the tough concept. Monad is almost trivial.

ridiculous_fish 6y ago
Good point, I agree. But you must learn it to get anything done. Grappling with IO + monad + do-notation all at once is hard! I once spent a day thinking I had misunderstood something fundamental, but really I just had an errant tab instead of a space.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  + type inference + return-type polymorphism!
- chowells 6y ago
  Ok, yes. Monads as a concept are almost trivial in comparison to thinking in terms of the IO type. But that doesn't mean they are easy and don't add more hurdles to get over. I think I undersold how daunting it can be to face all the new things at once, and you're right about it.
- yomly 6y ago
  As a recent Haskell learner, I found the indentation part of Haskell hard to learn and a little undiscoverable/hard to google. The number of times I've used curly braces, single lines or expression substitution to bail me out is many...
  - neckardt 6y ago
    You might like hinc, it's haskell but with C style syntax: https://github.com/serras/hinc/blob/master/why.md https://github.com/serras/hinc/blob/master/why.md
    - scns 6y ago
      I like it. "This is not by coincidence: people learning Haskell usually have problems with point-free style not because of the composition operator per se, but because code is suddenly "reversed". Other communities such as F# have adopted the "pipe forward" operator instead of composition as the default style." That's why i prefer the reverse application operator & to .
    - yomly 6y ago
      Thanks for the suggestion but Haskell would not be Haskell without its ML-yness. As confusing as operator precedence can get, I do see the beauty in "programmable whitespace" but to get anywhere close in other language syntaxes you need to do even more perverse things like here [1] If I did have to choose a different syntax for haskell it would be S-expressions rather than Algol so perhaps Hackett from Lexi Lambda [1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/48553568 https://stackoverflow.com/a/48553568

ridiculous_fish 6y ago

Good point, I agree. But you must learn it to get anything done. Grappling with IO + monad + do-notation all at once is hard! I once spent a day thinking I had misunderstood something fundamental, but really I just had an errant tab instead of a space.

dllthomas 6y ago
+ type inference + return-type polymorphism!
chowells 6y ago
Ok, yes. Monads as a concept are almost trivial in comparison to thinking in terms of the IO type. But that doesn't mean they are easy and don't add more hurdles to get over. I think I undersold how daunting it can be to face all the new things at once, and you're right about it.
yomly 6y ago
As a recent Haskell learner, I found the indentation part of Haskell hard to learn and a little undiscoverable/hard to google. The number of times I've used curly braces, single lines or expression substitution to bail me out is many...
- neckardt 6y ago
  You might like hinc, it's haskell but with C style syntax: https://github.com/serras/hinc/blob/master/why.md https://github.com/serras/hinc/blob/master/why.md
  - scns 6y ago
    I like it. "This is not by coincidence: people learning Haskell usually have problems with point-free style not because of the composition operator per se, but because code is suddenly "reversed". Other communities such as F# have adopted the "pipe forward" operator instead of composition as the default style." That's why i prefer the reverse application operator & to .
  - yomly 6y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion but Haskell would not be Haskell without its ML-yness. As confusing as operator precedence can get, I do see the beauty in "programmable whitespace" but to get anywhere close in other language syntaxes you need to do even more perverse things like here [1] If I did have to choose a different syntax for haskell it would be S-expressions rather than Algol so perhaps Hackett from Lexi Lambda [1] https://stackoverflow.com/a/48553568 https://stackoverflow.com/a/48553568