[Haskell-beginners] Functional programming concepts

[Tillmann Rendel]

Daniel Fischer wrote:
> Distinguish between findable and unfindable bottoms?
> The difference in practice is clear, but is there also a theoretical 
> difference?

That depends on the theory you choose. If you're only interested in 
non-bottom results anyway, you can choose to use a simple theory (that 
is: a simple formal semantic) which doesn't distinguish between 
non-termination and other errors. If you're interested in modeling 
error-handling, you should probably use a semantic which does 
distinguish different kinds of errors.

A denotational semantics which takes errors into account could use the 
error monad similar to how you use it in Haskell for explicit error 
handling. In fact, monads in CS where first introduced for denotational 
semantics, before they where applied to functional programming.

That means that you have a choice: Avoid findable bottoms by using 
explicit error handling with error monads in your program, so that you 
can use a simpler semantics to understand your code. Or use findable 
bottoms to encode errors, and use an error monad to upgrade your 
semantics to cope with them. I prefer to use the monads in my Haskell 
code, and not in my head (where the semantics is processed in the code 
understanding cycles of my programming process).

   Tillmann