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And what's the problem with living in an ivory tower, as someone who also lives in one? A monad is a mathematical idea. It has some learning curve, some inhere

by bollu 5y ago

And what's the problem with living in an ivory tower, as someone who also lives in one? A monad is a mathematical idea. It has some learning curve, some inherent complexity that you can't magically solve. The post you're mocking attempts to draw a helpful analogy. Maybe it helps the original author who said they couldn't find an explanation of monads that they liked. Maybe it doesn't help. I don't see how name calling such conversation as "ivory tower" helps anyone

neurotrace 5y ago
The comment was supposed to explain monads by common usage rather than as a mathematical notion. Prolog is not a commonly used language by us blue collar programmers. I feel I have a grasp on monads and yet that explanation meant little to me given my limited experience with Prolog.
AnimalMuppet 5y ago
> A monad is a mathmatical idea. Not here. A monad is a programming idea. It bears some similarity to a mathematical idea, but we aren't really doing category theory here. We're doing programming. The programming idea is simple: Anything that implements certain methods with certain semantics. That's it.
fao_ 5y ago
> And what's the problem with living in an ivory tower, as someone who also lives in one? The stated intent of the post is "to provide an understandable notion of Monads to people who do not get them", so it seems terribly ignorant of the audience to assume that they will know Prolog, a language known for incredibly arcane syntax that has mostly been unused except for a handful of circumstances, outside of the 1980s. The author wants to draw a parallel between Monads and Prolog's execution, however how many programmers understand Prolog? Of those programmers, how many haven't grasped monads? Even I, who has some Prolog knowledge, now has the mental and cognitive load of having to parse the Prolog that I haven't seen used properly in perhaps 6 years, on top of having to understand the analogy to monads, on top of having to understand the description of monads. If n-gate still existed, I would pay them to review this comment chain, personally.

by bollu 5y ago

neurotrace 5y ago

The comment was supposed to explain monads by common usage rather than as a mathematical notion. Prolog is not a commonly used language by us blue collar programmers. I feel I have a grasp on monads and yet that explanation meant little to me given my limited experience with Prolog.

AnimalMuppet 5y ago

> A monad is a mathmatical idea. Not here. A monad is a programming idea. It bears some similarity to a mathematical idea, but we aren't really doing category theory here. We're doing programming. The programming idea is simple: Anything that implements certain methods with certain semantics. That's it.

fao_ 5y ago

> And what's the problem with living in an ivory tower, as someone who also lives in one? The stated intent of the post is "to provide an understandable notion of Monads to people who do not get them", so it seems terribly ignorant of the audience to assume that they will know Prolog, a language known for incredibly arcane syntax that has mostly been unused except for a handful of circumstances, outside of the 1980s. The author wants to draw a parallel between Monads and Prolog's execution, however how many programmers understand Prolog? Of those programmers, how many haven't grasped monads? Even I, who has some Prolog knowledge, now has the mental and cognitive load of having to parse the Prolog that I haven't seen used properly in perhaps 6 years, on top of having to understand the analogy to monads, on top of having to understand the description of monads. If n-gate still existed, I would pay them to review this comment chain, personally.