[Haskell-cafe] Re: The problem with Monads...

Ertugrul Soeylemez es at ertes.de
Tue Jan 13 11:07:50 EST 2009


Jonathan Cast <jonathanccast at fastmail.fm> wrote:

> On Tue, 2009-01-13 at 12:56 -0200, Rafael Gustavo da Cunha Pereira Pinto
> wrote:
>
> > Inspired by the paper "Functional Programming with Overloading and
> > Higher-Order Polymorphism",
> >         Mark P Jones
> > (http://web.cecs.pdx.edu/~mpj/pubs/springschool.html)
> >           Advanced School of Functional Programming, 1995.
> >
> > SO WHAT?
>
> So have you read Jones' paper?  Or do you have a *concrete*
> explanation of how it differs from your desired `guided tour'?

I agree with Rafael here.  The standard library documentation is
insufficient.  Pointing to nothing else than a paper is about the same
as "RTFM", especially being "inspired" by a paper, there is really
almost no information in the documentation.  I wouldn't expect from an
average programmer to read a whole paper to understand an everyday-use
monad.  Especially for newcomers to the purely functional world, even
reading the introduction of a paper may well take an hour, which can be
tiring and frustrating.

There should be some basic information about the monad at least at the
end of the documentation, as well as some well-thought usage examples.


Greets,
Ertugrul.


-- 
nightmare = unsafePerformIO (getWrongWife >>= sex)
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