[Haskell-beginners] purely functional (non-monadic) alternativesfor Haskell animations in _The Haskell School of Expression_?

[Benjamin L.Russell]

On Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:14:46 +0100, "Chaddai Fouche"
<chaddai.fouche at gmail.com> wrote:

>2008/8/13 Bayley, Alistair <Alistair.Bayley at invesco.com>:
>>> First, monad /= imperative
>>> It is important to establish this distinction which doesn't seem to be
>>> very clear in some minds...
>>
>> I think Matthias Felleisen probably understands this, but I could be wrong...
>>
>
>I think so too, but we're on Haskell-beginners and the formulation was
>much too ambiguous to let it pass, I would prefer that beginners in
>Haskell don't start with the idea that Monad are always imperative,
>it's already too current a misunderstanding.

Can you recommend any specific examples to illustrate this point to a
programmer/educator from a Scheme background arguing that specific
libraries in world.ss are more functional than the monadic examples
for animations in SOE?

If possible, I would like to write a rebuttal to his claim, using
specific examples.

>> I had a quick scan of the SOE source and it looks as though all of the graphics operations are in IO (). I don't see why you couldn't rearrange it so that describing shapes was purely functional, while rendering was still IO () (required by OpenGL, I assume), but it looks like it could be quite a bit of work.
>>
>
>That's unfortunate. Of course IO (or some FRP hiding the IO) is still
>required to do the rendering, but it would be much nicer to split
>those concerns.

That's probably the point that Felleisen was addressing.  If functions
have any side-effects, then they aren't purely functional, but in
order to perform rendering, side-effects would be necessary in both
Haskell and Scheme, so this can't be his point.  Therefore, he must be
referring to other functions written in a more purely functional style
in world.ss than in SOE.  In order to address his point, they would
probably be need to be rewritten in a purely functional style.

-- Benjamin L. Russell