[Haskell-cafe] Moggi :: CT -> Hask

[Dan Doel]

On Saturday 07 February 2009 12:11:29 pm Gregg Reynolds wrote:
> I had a monadic revelation at about 3 am.  The answer to the question
> "what is an IO value, really?" is "who cares?"  I just posted a blog
> entry discussing how CT found it's way from Moggi into Haskell at
> http://syntax.wikidot.com/blog (hence the title; Moggi as functor).
> It addresses the question of what such things are and why Moggi's
> insight is so brilliant.  Feedback welcome, but please remember this
> is coming from a non-mathematician who likes to write.  If you find
> anything there that outrages your inner Russell, please correct me,
> but be gentle.

As far as I know, Moggi didn't really have anything directly to do with 
Haskell. He pioneered the idea of monads being useful in denotational 
semantics. But it was Wadler that recognized that they'd be useful for 
actually writing functional programs (see his "The Essence of Functional 
Programming"). So one might say that it was his doing that brought monads to 
Haskell proper.

-- Dan