Tony Morris

This kind of thing cannot be done without things that are super-important in the haskell world, e.g.: * sufficient static analysis discipline, obviously aided greatly by surfacing the type system * adequate community enthusiasm for tools to augment/replace flawed human faculties

Fun addendum that illustrates now noob I still am: I've actually used <|> a bunch because of parsec, but until now erroneously thought it was parsec-specific (thanks to the similarity to BNF's pipe). it's super-obvious now that <|> is big-F Fundamental

Used it with Maybe yet? Here's a puzzle: used it with Either? Why not?

Well, the whole story was about my discovering <|> as a replacement for my own Maybe-only impl I haven't used it with Either, but surely will after last night

There is no Alternative for Either because there is no empty. Have a look at Data.Functor.Alt.

He's being sincere. It is a good exercise to learn about Alt and ponder why Either has Alt but not Alternative. Here's the link for Alt http://hackage.haskell.org/package/semigroupoids-5.3.1/docs/Data-Functor-Alt.html …

Ok, thanks for the link. I guess I'm not generally receptive to socratic methods in this context