[Haskell-cafe] What are side effects in Haskell?

[Sterling Clover]

Granting the "everything is a function" idea the best intent, maybe  
what it's trying to express is the related but different notion that  
everything *can be* a function -- i.e. that any value can be replaced  
by a function which yields a value of the appropriate type.  
Alternately, it could be a confusion between the untyped lambda  
calculus, in which everything really is a function, and the typed  
lambda calculus, in which things are more complicated?

--S.


On Jan 2, 2009, at 2:53 PM, Conal Elliott wrote:

> Hi Cristiano,
>
> Similarly, any value can be thought of as a list (perhaps  
> singleton), a Maybe (Just), a pair ((,) undefined or (,) mempty),  
> an IO (return), ... (any Applicative).
>
> And yet I've heard "everything is a function" on several occasions,  
> but not these others.  Hence my (continuing) puzzlement about the  
> source of that idea.  I have some speculations:
>
> * In pure "OO" programming, everything is an object, so in pure  
> "functional" programming, one might assume everything is a  
> function.  I find the term "value-oriented programming" a more  
> accurate label than "functional programming".
>
> * C has definitions for functions but assignments for other types.   
> Since pure functional languages eliminate assignment, one might  
> assume that only functions remain.  (I also hear people refer to  
> top-level definitions in a Haskell module as "functions", whether  
> they're of function type or not.)
>
> Are there other thoughts & insights about the source of the idea  
> that "everything is a function"?
>
> Thanks,
>
>   - Conal
>
> On Fri, Jan 2, 2009 at 2:52 AM, Cristiano Paris  
> <frodo at theshire.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Dec 30, 2008 at 8:35 AM, Conal Elliott <conal at conal.net>  
> wrote:
> >> Everything in Haskell is a function [...]
> >
> > Where did this idea come from?
> >
> > I'd say every expression in Haskell denotes a pure value, only  
> some of which
> > are functions (have type a->b for some types a & b).
>
> Maybe more formally correct, but my statement still holds true as any
> values can be tought as constant functions, even those representing
> functions themselves.
>
> Cristiano
>
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