Tony Morris

1 - I presume that's scala 2 - Good on them for returning a Maybe 3 - Why isn't the 's' in a context of some sort? f s? [s] ?

It's pure Haskell. There is no useful way to write that in Scala.

Oh come on, you can do that in C++ without even reaching for macros.

Good luck (you will fail).

Maybe in Scala and C++ -- sure. Lens.... well...

You won't achieve the usefulness of lens in Scala and C++. The absence of lens directly implies that you may as well stay in bed.

I'll admit that I haven't gotten even remotely proficient with optics in Haskell, yet. Still learning.

Have merely learned enough that I feel nauseated when dealing with languages like Go or PHP.