[koolala]

My conviction goes like this:

1. Excel doesn't use rigid types so we can throw away all the rigid math stuff (this is where our perspectives diverge into non-sense)

2. Each Cell is a Monad

3. Each monad can be composed and reflect eachother better than any other programming language (more than Pipes like my original 1 | 2 | 3 example)

[rbonvall]

"Each cell is a monad" makes as much sense as "41 is a commutativity".

[koolala]

What I mean is, they can easily be used as monads - and in fact every Excel user might do so without even knowing what a monad is. Like 41 is used in commutative expressions all the time by people who don't even know what communitivity or associativity mathematically is and that is a good thing! It means its useful and intuitive!

That's why I wish we could throw out the Math, if we can't even use Monads without mathematically knowing they are Monads then no one is ever going to be using them. There must be a way that these patterns can become so intuitive, like Pipes (weak) and Excel (strong) that they speak for themselves and become tangible.

[consilient]

> if we can't even use Monads without mathematically knowing they are Monads then no one is ever going to be using them.

You don't need to know what a monad is to use one. Everyone who has ever written a computer program has used one. Knowing that you're using a monad, and what that means about your program structure, is the entire value proposition here - actually applying particular monad operations is utterly trivial. "Monad" belongs in the same category as "data structure", not "tree".

[kfixjviv]

"Everyone who has ever written a computer program has used one."

Absolutely false.

[koolala]

:)