[Haskell-cafe] Linguistic hair-splitting

[Donn Cave]

Quoth Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer at web.de>,
> Am Donnerstag 28 Januar 2010 09:14:38 schrieb Ketil Malde:
>> Daniel Fischer <daniel.is.fischer at web.de> writes:
>>> As usual, that only works part of the time. [1,4,15,3,7] is not a
>>> computation, it's a list of numbers. A plain and simple everyday
>>> value.
>>
>> But isn't a value of (IO String) equally plain and simple?
>
> Sure, but saying a value of type IO String is "a computation (in the IO 
> monad) returning a String" makes more sense to me than saying 
> [True,False,True] is "a computation (in the [] monad) returning a Bool".

For sure, and in general when people speak of monads they're really
talking about IO, true?  If that's disappointing, maybe it would help
to have a word for it, maybe `IO String' is an "irreduceable monadic
value" or something.

	Donn