5 ms·

You're moving the goalposts! You said 'the recommended way of writing a program to e.g. read two numbers from the user, add them, and print the result, demands

by tome 3y ago

You're moving the goalposts! You said 'the recommended way of writing a program to e.g. read two numbers from the user, add them, and print the result, demands understanding "Monad".'

Tainnor 3y ago
I don't think it's "moving the goalposts" when you demand that you can understand, at least to a first-order approximation, what the code that you write is doing. Yes, you could just treat IO as a black box and memorize a bunch of weird syntax rules, but you're going to have a hard time very quickly, especially when you change something and the compiler throws errors at you. FWIW, I think that monads are a powerful abstraction, but they're certainly not incredibly natural and Haskell basically just throws them at you from day 1.
lmm 3y ago
The recommended way of writing a program in most languages demands some level of understanding what you're writing. You would have to somehow come up with the "<-" parts of that program, and the recommended way of doing that is to understand Monad.
- tome 3y ago
  > The recommended way of writing a program in most languages demands some level of understanding what you're writing Sure, some. I think this discussion is about exactly what and how much, when it comes to Haskell. > the recommended way of doing that is to understand Monad. That doesn't ring true to me, not from how I learned Haskell and not by analogy with how I learned other languages. I don't remember having to "understand Monad" to write in "do" notation. Quite the opposite in fact. I vividly remember trying to "understand Monad" and being unable to, and then just giving up and trying to use do notation, finding it easy, completely unhelped by what I was trying to "understand", and regretting having spent all the time "understanding". But it's been a long time since I learned a language so maybe I'm mistaken. I would appreciate the point of view of others who have fresher eyes. I will concede that people have a harder time learning Haskell than Python (although I don't think anyone understands the exact reasons) but you gave a very specific example of a program that is supposedly requires some deep understanding to write in Haskell. I wanted to give a counterpoint so people can decide for themselves. That's as far as my claim goes.

by tome 3y ago

You're moving the goalposts! You said 'the recommended way of writing a program to e.g. read two numbers from the user, add them, and print the result, demands understanding "Monad".'

Tainnor 3y ago

I don't think it's "moving the goalposts" when you demand that you can understand, at least to a first-order approximation, what the code that you write is doing. Yes, you could just treat IO as a black box and memorize a bunch of weird syntax rules, but you're going to have a hard time very quickly, especially when you change something and the compiler throws errors at you. FWIW, I think that monads are a powerful abstraction, but they're certainly not incredibly natural and Haskell basically just throws them at you from day 1.

lmm 3y ago

The recommended way of writing a program in most languages demands some level of understanding what you're writing. You would have to somehow come up with the "<-" parts of that program, and the recommended way of doing that is to understand Monad.

tome 3y ago
> The recommended way of writing a program in most languages demands some level of understanding what you're writing Sure, some. I think this discussion is about exactly what and how much, when it comes to Haskell. > the recommended way of doing that is to understand Monad. That doesn't ring true to me, not from how I learned Haskell and not by analogy with how I learned other languages. I don't remember having to "understand Monad" to write in "do" notation. Quite the opposite in fact. I vividly remember trying to "understand Monad" and being unable to, and then just giving up and trying to use do notation, finding it easy, completely unhelped by what I was trying to "understand", and regretting having spent all the time "understanding". But it's been a long time since I learned a language so maybe I'm mistaken. I would appreciate the point of view of others who have fresher eyes. I will concede that people have a harder time learning Haskell than Python (although I don't think anyone understands the exact reasons) but you gave a very specific example of a program that is supposedly requires some deep understanding to write in Haskell. I wanted to give a counterpoint so people can decide for themselves. That's as far as my claim goes.