On 14/08/07, Seth Gordon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Sebastian Sylvan wrote: > > On 14/08/07, Dan Piponi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > >> If I was one of your students and you said that monads are recipes I > >> would immediately ask you where the monads are in my factorial program > >> regardless of whether you had introduced one or two different > >> analogies for recipes. > > > > Why would you? I really don't see where you would get that idea? If I > > tell you that a function returns "a fruit", would you ask where the > > fruit in your factorial program is? Probably not. Why would you go off > > and take an analogy for monads and apply it to something completely > > different and still think the analogy holds? > > A function is *not* a recipe in this analogy, it's just a function > > (which you hopefully should've covered by the time you get to monads. > > Monadic values, and *only* monadic values (not functions!) are to be > > viewed as analogous to real world cooking recipes in this analogy. > > Functions shouldn't. If you start mixing things together it will get > > confused, so just don't! > > As a mostly-newbie who is working on his own monad tutorial > (bwah-hah-hah), I share Dan's confusion about your analogy. > > Teacher: "Monads are like recipes." > > Student: "Aren't functions like recipes, too?" > > Teacher: "Well, yes, but we're talking about monads now, not functions." >
Teacher: No, functions are like chefs. They do things to their input. Monads are like recipes, they don't *do* anything at all, they just represent an action, they need chefs to interpret them. -- Sebastian Sylvan +44(0)7857-300802 UIN: 44640862 _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
