On 8/14/07, Lennart Augustsson
You don't normally call x::Int a computation of an Int because there's nothing that distinguishes the value of the x from what it was before you computed it.
Can you spell out exactly what you mean by this?
So I prefer to regard x as a value (in a domain, of course). But for x :: (Monad m) => m Int there is something else happening
When someone uses the phrase "something else" it implies that we are talking about two things, a "something" and a disjoint "something else". For example, if x = [1,2,3] what is the "something" and what is the "something else"? What was the x "before [I] computed it" and how does it differ from its "value"?
This is just the terminology people use, not an absolute truth, so you're free to think it's wrong. :)
For something like this I prefer to think in terms of "useful" and "not useful". If you find the term "computation" useful, I might find it useful too. So I'm jealous as I can't figure out how to use it. :-) I'm not looking for a formal definition or anything like that. But I would like a reliable way to distinguish between things that are computations and things that are not. -- Dan