I fundamentally still have no clue what a monad is but I don't like it, whatever it is.
- she/her
- shelraphen.com/
Mutant, librarian, poet, union rabble rouser, dog, Ashkenazi Jewish. Neuroweird, bodyweird, mostly sleepy.
I write about transformative justice, community, love, Judaism, Neurodivergence, mental health, Disability, geography, rivers, labor, and libraries; through poetry, opinionated essays, and short fiction.
I review Schoolhouse Rock! songs at @PropagandaRock
Website (RSS + Newsletter)
shelraphen.com/Website League
soc.lizard.tools/@shelYou must log in to comment.
in reply to @shel's post:
"tell me how you would do the thing if all the other things were done, and give that to me so i can do the thing in the right place" is one thing a monad can be
i've had to look this up enough times that i can say with middling confidence: monads are basically just template types.
optional<T> is a monad. vector<T> is a monad. python's list is a monad. but they want to fit everything into the abhuman mindspace of category theory so they obfuscate the practical reality of "it's mostly the idea of a containing type with behaviors" behind a bunch of nonsense about "functors"
at the risk of starting Serious Discourse in a shitpost, monads are not just template types: there's a set of requirements on the semantics. for example, Predicate<T> = T -> Bool is not a monad because you can't write a function of type T -> Predicate<T>
templated classes then. things that define a distinct containing type.
i still don't think it's a helpful concept because, again, it's obscured by abhuman nonsense, digging hard into abstractions unique to a very peculiar way of thinking about problems that is (i have to say it) kind of neat but struggles with practicality
but StringArg<T> = String -> T is a monad, and you generally don't really say that a function "contains" its return values
the abstraction is weird but as someone who's done Haskell for years, it is pretty useful in the context of that language (along with all the other ones like functors, applicatives, etc)
bro please there are two kinds of monads, indica and sativa, one gives you more of a head high, bro you have to just try it bro please bro
I think I'd be a little horrified if you knew what a monad was, ngl. Poorly explained programming deep lore doesn't need to escape to other folks, lol.
(Unless you're a programmer on the side of all of the other stuff)
this video explains it with code in its simplest form and is a really good explanation :3
It's so simple, a monad is just a monoid in the category of endofunctors!
I know what a monad is and used them for years and frankly I don't want to know what they are anymore.