What does (Avoid $ Success At All Costs) mean to you?

[atravers]

@Liamzy

[…] we had the simplified subsumption brouhaha, which I actually suspected was a trial balloon to see what would happen.

https://fs.blog/mental-model-hanlons-razor

---

@Liamzy

I consider all do-notation essentially procedural in cogition

[…] there’s a danger of programming in this [monadic] style too much (I know I do), and almost forgetting about the ‘pure’ style of Haskell.

Noel Winstanley (1999).

…it could also help to explain “Haskell being taught as primarily a pragmatic language” - once a definition is monadic, there seems to be no limit on what effects can be accessed: it just depends on the monadic type it’s being used with.

But if the monadic interface and it’s overly-procedural notions really do annoy you, this year’s ZuriHac includes invited talks by Conal Elliott and Gabriella Gonzalez - have they finally solved the puzzle of general-purpose denotative systems programming? If you go, take some extra storage for your preferred “mobile device” - it could be useful ;-)

---

@Liamzy

I believe some truly old-school Haskellers were outraged by the usage of monads, to begin with […]

For I/O, a few probably were (with others having merely been dissatisfied.) But from what I can recall (of what I’ve read), the advent of the monadic interface was embraced “with gusto” by the writers of parsers.

---

@Liamzy

[…] I personally dislike the necessity of code in do-notation, even if it’s often the most readable and maintainable way to express ideas.

And I *still* don’t believe in monads. :-)

Jonathan S. Shapiro.

…that being said: staying away from “success at all costs” had an crucial role in making the monadic interface so (in)famous - from 8 of 55 in A History of Haskell: Being Lazy with Class:

Lacking side effects, Haskell’s input/output was initially painfully clumsy, which was a source of considerable embarrassment. Necessity being the mother of invention, this embarrassment ultimately led to the invention of monadic I/O, which we now regard as one of Haskell’s main contributions to the world […]

(…if the monadic interface could be used to restrain "the I/O leviathan", what couldn’t it do?)

---

@Liamzy

What does (Avoid $ Success At All Costs) mean to you?

Back when Haskell was small, both in terms of usage and “supporting staff”, this question may have had some relevance. But the advent of the associated foundation and its various “aggregates” (committees, working groups, etc) would now make it a better question for candidates, instead of the wider Haskell community.