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> This phrase is the cheeky line to (somewhat) formally define the monad It's actually a satirical joke[1] that people started taking way too seriously. Honest

> This phrase is the cheeky line to (somewhat) formally define the monad It's actually a satirical joke[1] that people started taking way too seriously. Honestly, imho people should never use this line when explaining monads. It's like saying 'C is a purely functional programming language!' because Conal Elliott, around the same time, wrote[2] a parodic blog post making fun of purely functional programming zealots. [1] https://web.archive.org/web/20210824072932/https://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html https://web.archive.org/web/20210824072932/https://james-iry... [2] http://conal.net/blog/posts/the-c-language-is-purely-functional http://conal.net/blog/posts/the-c-language-is-purely-functio...

sfsffgrgd 5y ago
Come onnn. The phrase that forms the title of this post is very close to what (CT giant) Saunders Mac Lane wrote, quite seriously. In fact it's missing the word "just"! Iry was inspired by Mac Lane, but you seem to have got the wrong end of the stick on the actual status of these words. See, for example, https://stackoverflow.com/a/3870310/14768587 https://stackoverflow.com/a/3870310/14768587
- yawaramin 5y ago
  I am obviously talking in the context of programming, not abstract math ;-) In this context, it's quite obvious that I am correct. Programmers around the world wouldn't have been perplexed for a decade because of a labyrinthine quote from Mac Lane's Categories for the Working Mathematician.
momentoftop 5y ago
Conal Elliott wasn't making fun of pure functional programming zealots. Elliott is a pure functional programming zealot, and was making fun of Haskellers who defend the IO type as a purely functional way to express effects. He thinks the IO type sullies Haskell here, and that we should have picked a different representation for effects (historically, that was true FRP, something he conceived with the late Paul Haduk).

sfsffgrgd 5y ago

Come onnn. The phrase that forms the title of this post is very close to what (CT giant) Saunders Mac Lane wrote, quite seriously. In fact it's missing the word "just"! Iry was inspired by Mac Lane, but you seem to have got the wrong end of the stick on the actual status of these words. See, for example, https://stackoverflow.com/a/3870310/14768587 https://stackoverflow.com/a/3870310/14768587

yawaramin 5y ago
I am obviously talking in the context of programming, not abstract math ;-) In this context, it's quite obvious that I am correct. Programmers around the world wouldn't have been perplexed for a decade because of a labyrinthine quote from Mac Lane's Categories for the Working Mathematician.

momentoftop 5y ago

Conal Elliott wasn't making fun of pure functional programming zealots. Elliott is a pure functional programming zealot, and was making fun of Haskellers who defend the IO type as a purely functional way to express effects. He thinks the IO type sullies Haskell here, and that we should have picked a different representation for effects (historically, that was true FRP, something he conceived with the late Paul Haduk).