Hello,

> Look!  You are doing it again!  :)  Does that paragraph even
> contain the word "Monad"?  :)
>
Sorry. Your first paragraph led me to believe you were writing about monads.

> I'm aware a monad is an abstraction and as such it doesn't *do*
> anything.  My point was along the lines that you don't need to
> know that your working in a field to be able to learn that
>
>     3/2 = 1.5
>
I agree.

I think one of the problem with understanding monads comes from people mistakenly believing monads force an order of evaluation. This is a shortcoming of general Haskell tutorials which fail to convey that the order of evaluation is determined by data dependencies. If new programmers know that monads have nothing to do with forcing the order of evaluation when they start learning about monads, then maybe they will be less confused as they sort out what monads are actually used for.

-Jeff



---

This e-mail may contain confidential and/or privileged information. If you
are not the intended recipient (or have received this e-mail in error)
please notify the sender immediately and destroy this e-mail. Any
unauthorized copying, disclosure or distribution of the material in this
e-mail is strictly forbidden.