[Haskell-cafe] Monad of no `return` Proposal (MRP): Moving `return` out of `Monad`

[Bardur Arantsson]

On 10/07/2015 12:56 AM, José Manuel Calderón Trilla wrote:
> Hello all,
> 
> I agree with Henrik, I'm very keen on giving the new Haskell committee a
> shot.
> 
> While some may not think that Haskell2010 was a success, I think it would
> be difficult to argue that Haskell98 was anything but a resounding success
> (even if you don't think the language was what it could have been!).
> Haskell98 stabilized the constant changes of the proceeding 7 years. The
> stability brought with it books and courses, and the agreed-upon base of
> the language allowed _research_ to flourish as well. Having an agreed base
> allowed the multiple implementations to experiment with different methods
> of implementing what the standard laid out.
> 

I didn't mean to be too negative about Haskell2010 -- I think
Haskell2010 *was* a success, albeit a *limited* one, but I'm doubtful
that these things can be designed by committee, especially without
prototypes. The C++ community has realized this since C++11 was
finalized and are pursuing a much more aggresive evolution of both the
language and standard libraries as a consequence -- it has practically
become a requirement to have a working prototype in at least one
compiler before a language extension/change is even considered. C++ had
been completely stagnant since 1998 and there were some disasterous
decisions as a result of design-by-committee. "template export", nuff said.

That the new Haskell' committee is being spearheaded by the
apparently-untiring HVR does inspire some confidence, but as I say...
we'll see :). I'm actually an optimist, but I've just been disappointed
soooo many times...

Regarding the textbook/course argument: Look, I think(!) I understand
what you're saying, but any serious developer these days is going to be
*used* to adapting to change. *Everything* in practical (full-stack)
development these days changes so fast that it doesn't matter whether
Monad loses "return" or not. Do you have any idea how fast frontend
(JavaScript, mainly) developers have to (and are!) adapting to change?
I'm not saying it's necessarily a good thing, but it's happening and
people are used to it. There are backwards-incompatible changes in e.g.
React almost tri-monthly[1] and yet people adapt even though this is in
a *dynamically type-checked* language! (Besides, I didn't expect
university to teach me anything practical as in "trade school". I wanted
to learn *principles* and *ideas*.)

I can also sympathize with *educators* having to adapt their course
materials and such, but I think that should be par for the course...?

Please consider that the the way practical development really happens[2]
has changed and that the argument for stability has shifted somewhat.

Regards,

Bárður

[1] A rough guesstimation of the pace. They have a deprecation period of
1 release. I have to say that Facebook are also dogfooding, I think the
0.14 release post says that they have something like 15000(!) React
components at this point.

[2] I guess I should qualify that with "... in code bases <1 MLOC", but
would that might be a bit snarky? :)