Re: [Haskell-cafe] IO is a bad example for Monads

And more power to those who are pursuing the vision! But in the mean time I need to read and write files, start up external programs, call Excel through FFI, etc, etc. And there's no clever API for that yet, only IO. And I'd rather do IO in Haskell than in C++. I share the vision, though. I'm just not pursuing it at the moment. -- Lennart On Dec 11, 2007 6:02 PM, Conal Elliott wrote:

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This is at odds with the notion, popular on this list and other haskell forums, that pure functional programming is the future.

Perhaps a nit-pick, but I don't think we're talking about *pure* functional programming. I think we're talking about a mixture of functional and imperative programming in a functional language. Haskell offers a cleaner separation between the two than, say, Scheme or ML. The idea of pure functional programming (no explicit IO) for getting real things done is much more of a lunatic fringe vision, and I'm not sure there are many of us left pursuing that vision.

- Conal

On Dec 11, 2007 9:34 AM, Tim Newsham wrote:

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that someone who doesn't want to put the effort into learning the (admittedly difficult) concepts that Haskell embodies shouldn't be using the language? Haskell was never intended to be The Next Big Popular Language. It was intended to be a purely functional language for people who want to use

I haven't been following this thread closely, but would it be rude to suggest purely

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functional languages and who are willing to learn new concepts if it enables them to program in that style.

This is at odds with the notion, popular on this list and other haskell forums, that pure functional programming is the future.

Why is it that every time the topic of teaching basic concepts in an easier way comes up there are always two or three replies that say "should we bother? lets filter out the idiots?" These are pointless and counterproductive. Whether or not you like the idea of lesser entities sullying your private, pure, functional programming language, there are going to be a lot more people learning this language, and there will be people trying to make it easier for them to learn it.

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whatever. That said, of course we should strive to have better teaching materials, but there are a number of good IO/monad tutorials on the web. [...] because it enables us to write programs more effectively (in many cases, at least) than we can in other languages, but the learning curve is steep -- there ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Many of the best resources for learning Haskell are still academic papers published by language researchers. We've still got a long long way to go... Sure there's no shortcut to learning difficult concepts, but right now its more of a nature hike than a freeway...

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Mike

Tim Newsham http://www.thenewsh.com/~newsham/ http://www.thenewsh.com/%7Enewsham/ _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

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