Re: [Caml-list] What if exn was not an open type?

["Richard W.M. Jones" <rich@annexia.org>]

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 11:12:26AM +0200, Philippe Veber wrote:
> isn't that a context where error monads do a pretty decent job?
> 
> check_some_problem () >>= fun () ->
> check_some_other_problem () >>= fun () ->
> expect_something () >>= fun something ->
> finally_do something

Right, but the main problem with monads is they scare off ordinary
programmers :-/

When writing open source code in OCaml we have two -- conflicting --
goals.  Goal #1 is to write elegant, short, fast, safe code, and OCaml
really wins there.  Goal #2 is to attract outside programmers to work
on the project, and that's pretty hard with OCaml code, but we manage
it.  But it gets much much harder if we use any concept which strays
too far from imperative/C-like code.  You will see if you look through
our codebase that it's pretty imperative and -- quite deliberately --
avoids doing strange stuff with modules, functors or really anything
which is "excessively functional" (sorry for the loose term, but I
hope you know what I mean :-).

However when I have the time after my current conference I will try
to rewrite the code I linked to with monads to see if I can make
something which is both simple and readable.

Thanks,

Rich.