30 Dec
2011
30 Dec
'11
4:34 p.m.
Gregg Reynolds
Regarding side-effects, they can be (informally) defined pretty simply: any non-computational effect caused by a computation is a side-effect.
I wonder: can writing to memory be called a “computational effect”? If yes, then every computation is impure. If no, then what’s the difference between memory and hard drive? By the way, the Data.HashTable is in IO monad. Is it impure? Would it be pure if designers had chosen to use ST instead?