27 Jul
2009
27 Jul
'09
10:59 p.m.
On Jul 28, 2009, at 2:25 PM, Peter Gammie wrote:
But Richard (or am I arguing with Kay?) - monads don't interact.
You're arguing with Alan Kay here: the reference to Leibniz was his. The key link here is (Wikipedia): " Leibniz allows just one type of element in the build of the universe" (sic.). In precisely the same way, Alan Kay allowed just one kind of 'thing' in his computational universe: object. Just as in the lambda calculus, everything is a function and in set theory everything is a set, so in Smalltalk _everything_ (including classes and the number 42 and anonymous functions) is an object.
How are you going to relate Leibniz's monads and Haskell's? I can't find my way, neatly or otherwise. :-P
Verbally.