[Haskell-cafe] Monad Comprehensions

[Günther Schmidt]

Hi all,

once again I find myself merely scratching the surface of the power of  
Haskell, which is exciting and frustrating at the same time.

While real world demands require me to find / develop solutions quickly  
(abstractions for querying data sets) I keep catching glimpses of all this  
power.

But for someone like me it's difficult to assess from these glimpses alone  
which to study first. In the last few weeks I kept bugging people here on  
this list about DSLs, so I could create my own to express queries /  
relational algebra. I'd later choose then to compile this to SQL or to  
in-memory code.

Next thing I notice that I've overlooked list comprehension all this time,  
which already express quite a lot of what I'd need. And then, on top of it  
all, monad comprehension, or rather monads period. The thing that  
particularly set me off was a video from Dan Piponi:  
http://vimeo.com/6590617

It certainly made me realize how little I have understood how much power  
merely monads give you.

In short, I'm truly lost. If anyone else, with roughly the same starting  
point as me, has found their way through this jungle I'd certainly  
appreciate some tips. In particular I wonder if someone has been able to  
follow what Dan demonstrates in this video, or was it a jaw-dropping  
experience for everyone else just as me?

Günther