Re: [Haskell-cafe] Could someone teach me why we use Data.Monoid?

2009/11/13 Magnus Therning :

On Fri, Nov 13, 2009 at 4:52 PM, Andrew Coppin wrote:

...

This is the thing. If we had a class specifically for containers, that could be useful. If we had a class specifically for algebras, that could be useful. But a class that represents "any possible thing that can technically be considered a monoid" seems so absurdly general as to be almost useless. If you don't know what an operator *does*, being able to abstract over it isn't especially helpful...

...in my humble opinion. (Which, obviously, nobody else will agree with.)

But can't you say exactly the same about Monads?

There's a comment about monads for programming that goes along the lines of 'Monads are a just a structure (ADT?), but they happen to be a very good one." Does anyone know the original version (not my paraphrase) and who the originator was? Thanks Stephen