Tony Morris

Haskell programs side effect all the time, there's no prohibition or even cultural aversion to effects. The only "effect"-related thing we really avoid is the way in many languages one uses the stack, the heap, and static memory as a myriad of little ad hoc in-process databases.

I feel we're in a bind because there's now disagreement on what "side-effect" means. When I read Hughes's "Why Functional Programming Matters" it clearly says "functional programs contain no side-effects at all." So I comprehend this thread, but I'm unhappy with the terms.

In the past I've made a case that Haskell allows us to denote "effects" without "side-effects." Is my usage of these terms valid in light of other usages? Appeal to authority may be a logical fallacy, but it's not as bad when dealing with a semantic debate.

I think distinction between "effects" and "side-effects" doesn't exist in popular consciousness, so we're well into invention of terminology. Which is fine if you're writing a book and you can define words upfront, but I'm speaking to a general audience in already accepted terms.