On Fri, Sep 17, 2021 at 10:29:41PM +0200, Joachim Durchholz wrote:
Unsurpsingly, I have a mental model built around sequencing of internal state updates while passing data from one state to use in choosing the next state transition.
I have been finding the Monad expositions misleading - that idea that monads are for sequencing or transitions or mutable state always felt wrong to me, since the monad laws don't talk about any of these things at all.
That's the nature of mental models, they're first approximations with possible refinements. Yes, there are monads for which State is a poor analogy. The `Cont` monad comes to mind, one needs to "think different" when reasoning about `callCC`, `shift` and `reset` `State` as a mental model for monads captures basic sequencing with possible internal "effects" well enough to be a reasonable first approximation. Already with List exploring all possible paths the fit is not ideal. -- Viktor.