Pointed [Re: 2014 Applicative => Monad proposal]

[John Wiegley]

>>>>> John Lato <jwlato at gmail.com> writes:

>> One example is that Bind would occasionally be handy for EDSLs that
>> don't permit lifting arbitrary values as a no-op. Incidentally,
>> desugaring do notation does not actually use return at all, if memory
>> serves me...

> This strikes me as a very good reason for pointed.  Similar to how I'd like
> to see GArr included in ghc.

+1 to Pointed (and also Apply, Bind)

I would like to see Pointed/Apply/Bind make it in, alongside
Functor/Applicative/Monad.  Given the principle that it's always best to make
one's algorithms as general as possible (in order to limit the scope of what
must be reasoned about), having these three other classes would let us do more
of just that.

-- 
John Wiegley
FP Complete                         Haskell tools, training and consulting
http://fpcomplete.com               johnw on #haskell/irc.freenode.net