[Haskell-cafe] philosophy of Haskell

[Alberto G. Corona]

I did`nt care about the underlying theory behind monads once I learn that
the easy way to understand them is trough desugarization. Desugarize the
"do" notation, after that, desugarize the >>= and >>  operators down to the
function call notation and suddenly everithing lost its magic because it
becomes clear that a haskell monad is a sugarization of plain  functional
tricks.

But it seems that the trick is so productive because it comes from some
fundamental properties of math, the reality, and maybe the human mind . Jost
now I found this article:

Categorial Compositionality: A Category Theory Explanation for the
Systematicity of Human
Cognition<http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000858?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ploscompbiol/NewArticles+(PLoS+Computational+Biology:+New+Articles)>

That definitively gives me the motivation to learn category theory
seriously.

Alberto

<http://www.ploscompbiol.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pcbi.1000858?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+ploscompbiol/NewArticles+(PLoS+Computational+Biology:+New+Articles)>

2010/8/7 Michael Mossey <mpm at alumni.caltech.edu>

> When I started to study Haskell, I was surprised that so much emphasis was
> placed on simple things. Monads were introduced to me as basically a
> wrapper, and a bind function that unwrapped something and wrapped something
> else back up again. I didn't understand what the fuss was about. Later I saw
> the amazing feats of expressiveness that were possible. I scratched my head
> in confusion---"Wait, say that again?"
>
> Here's a quote from Bertrand Russell about philosophy (read: Haskell). He's
> actually being humorous, but it applies, in a way:
>
> "The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to
> seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical no one will
> believe it."
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell-cafe/attachments/20100808/aa65e020/attachment.html