5 ms·

They chose a deliberately over-simplified example in order to demonstrate the core concepts; I don't begrudge them that (nobody needs a program that prints out

by seldo 13y ago

They chose a deliberately over-simplified example in order to demonstrate the core concepts; I don't begrudge them that (nobody needs a program that prints out "Hello World!"). The audience level of this piece is confusing -- it looks like a friendly, cartoony introduction for a general audience, but it actually assumes you already know Haskell. Basically, you and I are not the intended audience.

egonschiele 13y ago
Right. I'm hoping to make monads easier to understand, but you need some knowledge of functional programming to build on. If I had tried catering to the complete beginner, this post would be much longer and not as focused :)
- seldo 13y ago
  That's fair enough! Perhaps a sentence at the beginning to establish your goal would prevent comments from confused clueless people like myself.
  - egonschiele 13y ago
    Done!
chii 13y ago
> They chose a deliberately over-simplified example in order to demonstrate the core concepts; i wish people who are writing guides on these topics pick a non-simplified situation where using this method makes for an easier program (vs using the "traditional method"). The comparison and contrasting of a functional/monadic approach vs a procedural approach in a complex scenario might actually shed more light - at least, for some one who is familiar with the procedural approach.
- balloot 13y ago
  I would love to see this! One of the fundamental issues I have with functional languages is every example I see is basically "See this thing that's relatively simple and uncomplicated in Ruby/PHP/C/whatever? Here's how to do that in Haskell!" And the Haskell version ends up being extremely unintuitive and complicated. Bottom line is I still don't know for which situations functional languages are a "good" tool.
  - gizmo686 13y ago
    I think the problem is that the Haskell version is actually very simple, to the person writing it. Its a classical problem of teaching, it is extremly easy to forget how something looks to new people.
  - egonschiele 13y ago
    Again, if you tell me where you're stumbling, I can fix it. I see your complaints all over this post and you haven't responded to me once.
- nandemo 13y ago
  That approach is used at length in Real World Haskell. For example, some code for key-value lookup is shown that deals with a series of Maybe foo values, first with a cascade of guards (think a cascade of if-else's), and later with monad syntax. There are other examples. http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/programming-with-monads.html http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/programming-with-monad...
  - lobster_johnson 13y ago
    I enjoyed RWH much more after having learned a lot of the basics. It starts off simple, to be sure, but then quickly jumps into the deep end. For a book that's about real-world stuff it gets into a lot of unnecessary detail, too, that should have been deferred until later "advanced" chapters. I appreciated the hands-on approach to real examples, though. "Learn You A Haskell For Great Good" [1], while much less complete, is the best intro I have found so far. It's also free. [1] http://learnyouahaskell.com/ http://learnyouahaskell.com/
balloot 13y ago
I know a bit about Haskell and have played with it. I guess it just seems like functional languages are for those who want to solve super complicated mental exercises when doing tasks that would otherwise be easy using a traditional language. There are very few things in the world of CS/programming where I can't follow along and grok what's going on, especially when laid out in a tutorial form like this. The fact that I was totally lost when reading this is not a good sign when you're trying to get people to adopt your school of thought.
- egonschiele 13y ago
  Post author here. I'd love to know where you stumbled!
- tel 13y ago
  This is a pretty common idea, but it's because pure functional programming is, at first, all about getting you to significantly change your programming POV. It's a shift for anyone---in fact, the better you are at understanding C/Ruby/Python/Perl/Java/ObjC/Lua the harder a shift it is. At the end of the day, you adopt a new way of thinking that is incredibly clarifying for all programming. One simple thing is that it allows you to "see" where state, re-entry, evaluation, IO, and failure are happening in a program---things that you are blind to when you're used to languages where the answer is "always". This article isn't even meant to explain why you ought to learn Haskell. It's more like a signpost on your path to mastery, should you begin walking it.
- chongli 13y ago
  >There are very few things in the world of CS/programming where I can't follow along and grok what's going on, especially when laid out in a tutorial form like this. That's probably because most of the tutorials you've followed have adopted an imperative style of programming. It is easy for you to follow along because it really isn't all that different from what you are accustomed to. Functional programming really is a different beast entirely. It's often said (though I remain skeptical) that it's actually easier to learn functional programming as a non-programmer than to un-learn your imperative programming tendencies. >The fact that I was totally lost when reading this is not a good sign when you're trying to get people to adopt your school of thought. I don't think that's a fair assessment. You could say the same thing about starting from functional programming and switching to imperative; some people actually do this! They find the idea of mutating a variable to be completely counter-intuitive!
olavk 13y ago
In other communities, new tools and abstractions are generally "sold" by explaining how they are useful for solving specific problems. Not so in the Haskell community though. The Haskell community has a longstanding tradition of using condescending language ("fmap is from the street, fmap is hip to contexts."), and deliberate childrens-book style metaphors and illustrations in tutorials. The theory seem to be that if monads haven't been adopted by mainstream developers yet, it is just because the presentations haven't been dumbed-down and kiddie-friendly enough yet. (If only they from the onset had called "monads" for "warm fuzzy things" instead, surely developers would not be so scared of them!) The strategy have not yet borne fruit, though.

by seldo 13y ago

egonschiele 13y ago

Right. I'm hoping to make monads easier to understand, but you need some knowledge of functional programming to build on. If I had tried catering to the complete beginner, this post would be much longer and not as focused :)

seldo 13y ago
That's fair enough! Perhaps a sentence at the beginning to establish your goal would prevent comments from confused clueless people like myself.
- egonschiele 13y ago
  Done!

chii 13y ago

> They chose a deliberately over-simplified example in order to demonstrate the core concepts; i wish people who are writing guides on these topics pick a non-simplified situation where using this method makes for an easier program (vs using the "traditional method"). The comparison and contrasting of a functional/monadic approach vs a procedural approach in a complex scenario might actually shed more light - at least, for some one who is familiar with the procedural approach.

balloot 13y ago
I would love to see this! One of the fundamental issues I have with functional languages is every example I see is basically "See this thing that's relatively simple and uncomplicated in Ruby/PHP/C/whatever? Here's how to do that in Haskell!" And the Haskell version ends up being extremely unintuitive and complicated. Bottom line is I still don't know for which situations functional languages are a "good" tool.
- gizmo686 13y ago
  I think the problem is that the Haskell version is actually very simple, to the person writing it. Its a classical problem of teaching, it is extremly easy to forget how something looks to new people.
- egonschiele 13y ago
  Again, if you tell me where you're stumbling, I can fix it. I see your complaints all over this post and you haven't responded to me once.
nandemo 13y ago
That approach is used at length in Real World Haskell. For example, some code for key-value lookup is shown that deals with a series of Maybe foo values, first with a cascade of guards (think a cascade of if-else's), and later with monad syntax. There are other examples. http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/programming-with-monads.html http://book.realworldhaskell.org/read/programming-with-monad...
- lobster_johnson 13y ago
  I enjoyed RWH much more after having learned a lot of the basics. It starts off simple, to be sure, but then quickly jumps into the deep end. For a book that's about real-world stuff it gets into a lot of unnecessary detail, too, that should have been deferred until later "advanced" chapters. I appreciated the hands-on approach to real examples, though. "Learn You A Haskell For Great Good" [1], while much less complete, is the best intro I have found so far. It's also free. [1] http://learnyouahaskell.com/ http://learnyouahaskell.com/

balloot 13y ago

I know a bit about Haskell and have played with it. I guess it just seems like functional languages are for those who want to solve super complicated mental exercises when doing tasks that would otherwise be easy using a traditional language. There are very few things in the world of CS/programming where I can't follow along and grok what's going on, especially when laid out in a tutorial form like this. The fact that I was totally lost when reading this is not a good sign when you're trying to get people to adopt your school of thought.

egonschiele 13y ago
Post author here. I'd love to know where you stumbled!
tel 13y ago
This is a pretty common idea, but it's because pure functional programming is, at first, all about getting you to significantly change your programming POV. It's a shift for anyone---in fact, the better you are at understanding C/Ruby/Python/Perl/Java/ObjC/Lua the harder a shift it is. At the end of the day, you adopt a new way of thinking that is incredibly clarifying for all programming. One simple thing is that it allows you to "see" where state, re-entry, evaluation, IO, and failure are happening in a program---things that you are blind to when you're used to languages where the answer is "always". This article isn't even meant to explain why you ought to learn Haskell. It's more like a signpost on your path to mastery, should you begin walking it.
chongli 13y ago
>There are very few things in the world of CS/programming where I can't follow along and grok what's going on, especially when laid out in a tutorial form like this. That's probably because most of the tutorials you've followed have adopted an imperative style of programming. It is easy for you to follow along because it really isn't all that different from what you are accustomed to. Functional programming really is a different beast entirely. It's often said (though I remain skeptical) that it's actually easier to learn functional programming as a non-programmer than to un-learn your imperative programming tendencies. >The fact that I was totally lost when reading this is not a good sign when you're trying to get people to adopt your school of thought. I don't think that's a fair assessment. You could say the same thing about starting from functional programming and switching to imperative; some people actually do this! They find the idea of mutating a variable to be completely counter-intuitive!

olavk 13y ago

In other communities, new tools and abstractions are generally "sold" by explaining how they are useful for solving specific problems. Not so in the Haskell community though. The Haskell community has a longstanding tradition of using condescending language ("fmap is from the street, fmap is hip to contexts."), and deliberate childrens-book style metaphors and illustrations in tutorials. The theory seem to be that if monads haven't been adopted by mainstream developers yet, it is just because the presentations haven't been dumbed-down and kiddie-friendly enough yet. (If only they from the onset had called "monads" for "warm fuzzy things" instead, surely developers would not be so scared of them!) The strategy have not yet borne fruit, though.