On Tue, Jul 12, 2011 at 3:01 PM, Konrad Hinsen <konrad.hin...@fastmail.net> wrote: > On 12 Jul 2011, at 15:40, James Keats wrote: > >> My humble understanding is that macros complicate composability, >> whereas monads facilitate it. > > The composability issue with macros lies in writing them, not using them. > Monads are all about composing computations with specific properties, where > the monad abstracts away those properties. But I don't see any common point > between macros and monads other than that both words start with 'm'.
Well, they *do* also have a total of five letters, including an 'a' and and an 'o' as well as two consonants besides the initial 'm'. Oh, and the second letter is a vowel in both cases. I think maybe Haskell also relies on monads for some of the things where a Lisp traditionally relies on macros, such as implementing control structures -- Haskell has lazy function arguments, and it's already clear from sequence-m and maybe-m that monads can implement some kinds of conditionals and loops and even a form of exception handling. > One approach that has been proposed to improve composability of macros is to > adopt a continuation-passing style. This would make macros a candidate for > the continuation monad, so perhaps monads may be of use in implementing > complex macros. That popcorn-popping sound you hear is heads exploding out there in the audience. -- Protege: What is this seething mass of parentheses?! Master: Your father's Lisp REPL. This is the language of a true hacker. Not as clumsy or random as C++; a language for a more civilized age. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Clojure" group. To post to this group, send email to clojure@googlegroups.com Note that posts from new members are moderated - please be patient with your first post. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to clojure+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/clojure?hl=en
