Want to hear some serious nerd bullshit? Monads, the hardest concept in all of computer science for anyone to understand are just the things between pipes monad | monad | monad | monad | no --really "But they're pipes with types!" "Oh, that's always a mess." "I KNOW!!!"
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Replying to @dakami
Monads are definitely not hard to understand, and are most certainly not "just pipes." It is broken metaphors like these that lead to the endless confusion, over what is otherwise simple.
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"Monads are definitely not hard to understand, and are most certainly not 'just pipes'" I feel like this is a contradiction
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Replying to @BlindMansBinary @dakami
Please tell me where these two facts contradict. I have taught what monad means, comprehensively, without compromise, to hundreds of people. Not once did I labour with inappropriate, inaccurate, counter-productive, deflective metaphors such as "just pipes." What contradiction?
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If monads were that easy to grok then surely it wouldn't be mistaken with a pipe metaphor. If it can be 'mistaken' with pipe metaphor everyone can grok, then is it really that simple?
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Replying to @BlindMansBinary @dibblego
Once you have the class of objects, you can describe much more complex relationships than UNIX pipes allow.
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I assumed as much. I used to teach, even bright students would not all quickly get 'simple' concepts, even if they could visualize. I'm leery of trying to reduce monads to This One Weird (pedagogical) Trick. I appreciate the pipe metaphor even if not perfect.
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The metaphor is not imperfect. It is counter-productive. Give me two equal people, the first who has committed to this metaphor, and the other who has not. The second will gain an understanding of the subject first and comprehensively. This is a consistent result.
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