[Haskell-cafe] monads and groups -- instead of loops
Haskellians, Though the actual metaphor in the monads-via-loops doesn't seem to fly with this audience, i like the spirit of the communication and the implicit challenge: find a pithy slogan that -- for a particular audience, like imperative programmers -- serves to uncover the essence of the notion. i can't really address that audience as my first real exposure to programming was scheme and i moved into concurrency and reflection after that and only ever used imperative languages as means to an end. That said, i think i found another metaphor that summarizes the notion for me. In the same way that the group axioms organize notions of symmetry, including addition, multiplication, reflections, translations, rotations, ... the monad(ic axioms) organize(s) notions of snapshot (return) and update (bind), including state, i/o, control, In short group : symmetry :: monad : update Best wishes, --greg -- L.G. Meredith Managing Partner Biosimilarity LLC 505 N 72nd St Seattle, WA 98103 +1 206.650.3740 http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] monads and groups -- instead of loops
That's great, unless the imperative programmer happens to be one of the 90% of programmers that isn't particularly familiar with group theory... On 8/1/07, Greg Meredith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Haskellians, Though the actual metaphor in the monads-via-loops doesn't seem to fly with this audience, i like the spirit of the communication and the implicit challenge: find a pithy slogan that -- for a particular audience, like imperative programmers -- serves to uncover the essence of the notion. i can't really address that audience as my first real exposure to programming was scheme and i moved into concurrency and reflection after that and only ever used imperative languages as means to an end. That said, i think i found another metaphor that summarizes the notion for me. In the same way that the group axioms organize notions of symmetry, including addition, multiplication, reflections, translations, rotations, ... the monad(ic axioms) organize(s) notions of snapshot (return) and update (bind), including state, i/o, control, In short group : symmetry :: monad : update Best wishes, --greg -- L.G. Meredith Managing Partner Biosimilarity LLC 505 N 72nd St Seattle, WA 98103 +1 206.650.3740 http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] monads and groups -- instead of loops
Andrew, ;-) Agreed! As i said in my previous post, i can't address the imperative programmer. i really don't think that way and have a hard time understanding people who do! (-; Best wishes, --greg On 8/1/07, Andrew Wagner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That's great, unless the imperative programmer happens to be one of the 90% of programmers that isn't particularly familiar with group theory... On 8/1/07, Greg Meredith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Haskellians, Though the actual metaphor in the monads-via-loops doesn't seem to fly with this audience, i like the spirit of the communication and the implicit challenge: find a pithy slogan that -- for a particular audience, like imperative programmers -- serves to uncover the essence of the notion. i can't really address that audience as my first real exposure to programming was scheme and i moved into concurrency and reflection after that and only ever used imperative languages as means to an end. That said, i think i found another metaphor that summarizes the notion for me. In the same way that the group axioms organize notions of symmetry, including addition, multiplication, reflections, translations, rotations, ... the monad(ic axioms) organize(s) notions of snapshot (return) and update (bind), including state, i/o, control, In short group : symmetry :: monad : update Best wishes, --greg -- L.G. Meredith Managing Partner Biosimilarity LLC 505 N 72nd St Seattle, WA 98103 +1 206.650.3740 http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe -- L.G. Meredith Managing Partner Biosimilarity LLC 505 N 72nd St Seattle, WA 98103 +1 206.650.3740 http://biosimilarity.blogspot.com ___ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
Re: [Haskell-cafe] monads and groups -- instead of loops
On 01/08/07, Greg Meredith [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
Haskellians,
Though the actual metaphor in the monads-via-loops doesn't seem to fly with
this audience, i like the spirit of the communication and the implicit
challenge: find a pithy slogan that -- for a particular audience, like
imperative programmers -- serves to uncover the essence of the notion. i
can't really address that audience as my first real exposure to programming
was scheme and i moved into concurrency and reflection after that and only
ever used imperative languages as means to an end. That said, i think i
found another metaphor that summarizes the notion for me. In the same way
that the group axioms organize notions of symmetry, including addition,
multiplication, reflections, translations, rotations, ... the monad(ic
axioms) organize(s) notions of snapshot (return) and update (bind),
including state, i/o, control, In short
group : symmetry :: monad : update
Best wishes,
--greg
Hello,
I just wrote
http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Monads_as_computation
after starting to reply to this thread and then getting sidetracked
into writing a monad tutorial based on the approach I've been taking
in the ad-hoc tutorials I've been giving on #haskell lately. :)
It might be worth sifting through in order to determine an anthem for monads.
Something along the lines of:
monads are just a specific kind of {embedded domain specific
language, combinator library}
would work, provided that the person you're talking to knows what one
of those is. :) I've found it very effective to explain those in
general and then explain what a monad is in terms of them.
I'm not certain that the article is completely finished. I'm a bit
tired at the moment, and will probably return to polish the treatment
some more when I'm more awake, but I think it's finished enough to
usefully get the main ideas across.
- Cale
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