[Haskell-cafe] Trapped by the Monads

[Mark Carter]

Mark Carter wrote:

> What struck me was this bit of code:
>
> assemblyLine w = (return w) >>= makeChopsticks >>= polishChopsticks 
> >>= wrapChopsticks
>
>
> Interestingly, this looks like Forth (!), where you put a value on the 
> stack, and successive operations fiddle with the stack as a series of 
> transformations. Not that I know Forth, you understand. Hmm, so 
> Haskell can be a concatenative language if you want it to be.

Another thing I noticed in my nano-experience of Haskell is the Maybe 
monad. This is interesting because it's a bit like a hybrid variables. 
If you look at a book like "Writing Solid Code" (or is it "Code 
Complete", I can't remember now) which examine C style, they basically 
scorn the use of hybrid variables. However, I read in something like 
"Thinking Forth" (or maybe it was just a comment I saw atrributed to 
Charles Moore, the inventor of Forth), who actually advocated hybrid 
variables.

It would be interesting to see how far the notion of "Haskell as Forth" 
can go. Can Haskell make a better Forth than Forth can, or does it miss 
some things which are quite natural in Forth.


		
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