Comments on: Haskell: bootstrapping into a clue about monads

By: Bryan O'Sullivan

Bryan O'Sullivan — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 16:42:02 +0000

Paul – the nuclear waste metaphor in the Haskell wikibook made me grind my teeth. It was one of my prime motivators to swear off reading tutorials in my quest to grok monads.

The tutorial component of All About Monads is a better fit to the way I prefer to learn, since it builds up a few concrete examples in small, comprehensible steps. And the catalogue of common monads in Part II is excellent, since it provides a rationale for why you should care about each one that’s missing from the standard Haddock doco. There’s a familiar sinking feeling I get when reading a piece of Haddock, to find myself referred to someone’s PhD thesis for a description of what’s going on.

By: Paul Johnson

Paul Johnson — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 09:51:32 +0000

Could you also comment on the Wikibook explanation? How did it compare with All About Monads?

Thanks,

Paul.

By: sigfpe

sigfpe — Wed, 10 Jan 2007 01:18:45 +0000

Metaphors. Yes. Very dangerous.

By: Bryan O'Sullivan

Bryan O'Sullivan — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 22:32:37 +0000

Dan, I’m afraid I simply didn’t read your tutorial, even though I was aware of its existence. I gave up on the tutorial path before I reached it. Thank you for not inflicting more tortured metaphors on the world in yours, though.

By: sigfpe

sigfpe — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 20:01:04 +0000

If you have time, tell me where you gut stuck in my 'tutorial' where, among other things, I make the 'do notation' of secondary importance.