Monad Tutorials Timeline

preommr•about 2 hours ago

To explain like two fundamental rules (we can make wrapper types, and do flatmap) I will:

- Write 5 paragraphs setting up an imaginary scenario involving fantasy elements of aliens, dragons, and a magical kindom where they speak using message boxes

- Introduce basic category theory by starting with what a functor is

- Explain all the effects of a monad in such general terms that it basically amounts to anything and everything - since a function can be anything and do everything and it's just function composition

- Write some snippets of Haskell, and just assume that you're familiar with the syntax

- Talk about how delicious burritos are

alper•10 minutes ago

I've read more than my fair share of these tutorials, and I'd like to be proven wrong here but I don't think I've ever seen one that explains what the point of these functional constructs (similarly with Applicative etc.) is.

"You can do IO now." So what? I could do IO before that as well.

Very rarely are practical explanations discussed. Even if they are discussed, the treatment is shallow and useless.

lmm•7 minutes ago

Here's my effort: https://m50d.github.io/2013/01/16/generic-contexts

armchairhacker•27 minutes ago

I still don’t understand why it’s named from Gnosticism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monad_(Gnosticism))

yccs27•12 minutes ago

Monads got their name from monoids (being a monoid in the category of endofunctors). Monoids are equivalent to one-object categories, so the name uses the greek syllable "mono" for one.

urxvtcd•21 minutes ago

Yeah, would like to know as well. I think the applicative functor was originally call "Idiom", another weird name.

gnabgib•about 6 hours ago

It's an updating wiki.. but (2017) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15170328

Popular well.. submissions in:

2019 (3 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19207241

2022 (3 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30277518

2024 (11 points) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40332349

cpa•about 3 hours ago

Pretty cool!

I've spent a lot of time wrapping my head around monads; whenever I thought I "got it," I would come across some exotic monad that completely blew my mind. The best way to understand them is not to rely on analogies but just follow the rules—everybody says that, but it took me a while to truly realize it.

See, for example, the Tardis monad or the Cont monad: https://www.reddit.com/r/haskell/comments/446d13/exotic_mona...

ducklord•about 1 hour ago

I tried understanding the rules but actually using it helped me to get it. Especially when I was using a parser combinator to parse a programming language.

cubefox•about 2 hours ago

I understood the monad concept for a few months in university. After the exam was over, I soon stopped understanding it. The same thing happened with the concept of VC dimension. It's kind of interesting, because we usually don't think of "understanding" as something that comes with a time limit.

alper•12 minutes ago

It happens all the time. For a brief period I understood musical notation and rhythm and then it was gone. Similarly I had a time in my life where I knew by feeling whether a French noun was le or la.

Dig1t•about 3 hours ago

So weird, on the front page at the same time as this: "Biology is a burrito"

When I saw that link it immediately reminded me of this: https://blog.plover.com/prog/burritos.html

>Monads are like burritos

And then a few links down is this link to monad tutorials.

Weird coincidence.

ducklord•about 1 hour ago

> Monads are like burritos https://blog.plover.com/prog/burritos.html

I'm surprised that this tutorial isn't on the wiki.

Monad Tutorials Timeline

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