[Haskell-cafe] Haskell-Cafe Digest, Vol 217, Issue 16

[Tom Ellis]

On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 05:02:09PM +0000, Richard Eisenberg wrote:
> > On Sep 17, 2021, at 3:50 AM, Tom Ellis <tom-lists-haskell-cafe-2017 at jaguarpaw.co.uk> wrote:
> > 
> > On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 01:43:01PM +0900, Michael Turner wrote:
> >> I finally got (most of?) what monads really mean for practical
> >> programming when none other than Simon Peyton-Jones said F# called a
> >> very similar construct "workflow," a word he likes.
> > 
> > Was it literally just a single sentence introducing a new word for a
> > concept that made you "get it"?  Could you elaborate?  This is really
> > quite remarkable.
> 
> For me, coming from a mostly Java background (but with a healthy
> dollop of functional programming thrown in the mix -- but no
> Haskell), the phrase that unlocked monads was "programmable
> semicolon".

I'm curious what "unlock" means here.  Do you mean you could
understand the definition of the monad class after coming across
"programmable semicolon" but not before?  Or do you mean you
understood the *purpose* of monads, but not necessarily how one would
go about implementing them?  Or something else?