From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: (from majordomo@localhost) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) id VAA15613; Mon, 19 Nov 2001 21:49:25 +0100 (MET) X-Authentication-Warning: pauillac.inria.fr: majordomo set sender to owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr using -f Received: from concorde.inria.fr (concorde.inria.fr [192.93.2.39]) by pauillac.inria.fr (8.7.6/8.7.3) with ESMTP id VAA15039 for ; Mon, 19 Nov 2001 21:49:22 +0100 (MET) Received: from smtpout.mac.com (smtpout.mac.com [204.179.120.88]) by concorde.inria.fr (8.11.1/8.10.0) with ESMTP id fAJKnHb07460 for ; Mon, 19 Nov 2001 21:49:18 +0100 (MET) Received: from smtp-relay02.mac.com (server-source-si02 [10.13.10.6]) by smtpout.mac.com (8.12.1/8.10.2/1.0) with ESMTP id fAJKHnS0028576 for ; Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:18:29 -0800 (PST) Received: from asmtp02.mac.com ([10.13.10.66]) by smtp-relay02.mac.com (Netscape Messaging Server 4.15 relay02 Jun 21 2001 23:53:48) with ESMTP id GN2F4100.FX0 for ; Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:48:01 -0800 Received: from kallisti.apple.com ([17.206.25.144]) by asmtp02.mac.com (Netscape Messaging Server 4.15 asmtp02 Jun 21 2001 23:53:48) with ESMTP id GN2F4000.9NL; Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:48:00 -0800 Date: Mon, 19 Nov 2001 12:47:44 -0800 Reply-To: jhw@wetware.com Mime-Version: 1.0 (Apple Message framework v475) Cc: The Trade Message-Id: In-Reply-To: <20011119105842.A29501@chopin.ai.univie.ac.at> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed Subject: Re: [Caml-list] Re: variance, subtyping and monads... oh, my! From: james woodyatt Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit To: Markus Mottl X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.475) Sender: owner-caml-list@pauillac.inria.fr Precedence: bulk On Monday, November 19, 2001, at 01:58 , Markus Mottl wrote: > On Mon, 19 Nov 2001, james woodyatt wrote: >> >> If by using monads, on the other hand, I can do something easily that >> would otherwise be very awkward, then I'm sold. So far, I have only >> found examples of how to do things I can already do better with the >> imperative and object-oriented styles in OCaml. > > Objects are useful abstractions for states, whereas monads are > abstractions of computations (i.e. state transformations, like e.g. > rewriting steps as above). These two things solve different problems so > it wouldn't make much sense saying that one is "better" than the other. That's probably what I needed to hear. Thanks very much for the advice. I'll take a look at that FFTW library for more clues about using the monadic style. I hope to discover that I can use monads to address a particularly thorny class of problems that seems to arise again and again in my work, and which seems not to be well addressed by objects alone: cross-cutting concerns in the implementation of network application protocols. -- j h woodyatt "...the antidote to misinformation is more information, not less." --vinton cerf ------------------- Bug reports: http://caml.inria.fr/bin/caml-bugs FAQ: http://caml.inria.fr/FAQ/ To unsubscribe, mail caml-list-request@inria.fr Archives: http://caml.inria.fr