Ben Franksen wrote:
I don't buy this. As has been noted by others before, IO is a very special
case, in that it can't be defined in Haskell itself, and there is no
evaluation function runIO :: IO a -> a.
This is a straw man. Most monads will not have such a function:
There is no function (State s a) -> a.
There is no function (r -> a) -> a.
There is no function (Random a) -> a. [assuming some random monad, often
discussed]
There is no function (Supply s a) -> a. [Another useful monad although
not one of the standard ones]
There are no (total) functions Maybe a -> a, [a] -> a, Either e a -> a.
As to the topic of the thread: I agree IO is an unusual monad. I'm not
sure if I agree that it shouldn't be used as a teaching basis. I think
there are all kinds of ways to teach haskell; I'd be inclined to want to
start with some IO, without explaining the plumbing in detail, and then
come back to it later with better perspective when discussing general
monads.
Jules
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