MTL vs Free-monads, what are your experiences

15 Oct 2016

      Matt wrote:
...
The mtl technique subsumes the free monad technique. if you have a term:
getCurrentTime :: MonadClock m => m UTCTime
The relationship between MTL and Free(r) monad approaches is filled
with confusion, as you message has just demonstrated. There is nothing
specific to MTL in writing the constraints like MonadClock. There is
absolutely nothing that prevents you from defining

        instance Member ClockEffect r => MonadClock (Eff r)

or similar with Free monads, 
        instance MonadClock (Free CurrentTimeF)

(which are less efficient, compose less well and require the
boilerplate of writing functor instances).

In short, defining constraints like MonadClock, MonadState etc. is not
specific to any approach to effects.  The difference between the monad
transformer and Free monad is how you build types that satisfy the
MonadClock etc. constraint. In MTL, you build by applying monad
transformer to a suitable base monad. In Free monad, you define
functors like CurrentTimeF and then build the Free monad.

In Freer monad approach, your example getCurrentTime will look like
        getCurrentTime :: Member ClockEffect r => Eff r UTCTime
which looks quite like 
        getCurrentTime :: MonadClock m => m UTCTime
in your example. Therefore, there is usually no need to define a
separate MonadClock class. But nothing stops you from doing that.

Oleg

John Wiegley

Alberto G. Corona

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