To a person like myself, who knows Perl but doesn't know Haskell, the phrase "overloading semicolon" evokes visions of pure horror, of a world in which C++ has been rewritten in Obfuscated Perl and then ROT13'd.
I think this is the ultimate problem with Perl: it offers you tremendous power, but it teaches you to associate that power with a feeling of impending doom. It's like being introduced to pneumatics and two-stroke engines by watching a Battlebots exhibition. From now on, whenever you see a power tool, a primitive layer of your brain will urge you to run away, because someone's going to abuse it and it's going to explode.
Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that the invention of Perl was followed by the invention of Java, a language in which every potentially powerful construct comes safely wrapped in seven or eight layers of protective ASCII padding, with warning signs on the outside. An overreaction, but an understandable one.
Fortunately, this article is not only not as terrifying as the title would suggest -- it's actually quite clear and enlightening.
If you're a visual learner, the easiest way to understand monads might be to first understand arrows -- because arrows can be explained nicely through diagrams -- and then understand monads as a special case.
I think this is the ultimate problem with Perl: it offers you tremendous power, but it teaches you to associate that power with a feeling of impending doom. It's like being introduced to pneumatics and two-stroke engines by watching a Battlebots exhibition. From now on, whenever you see a power tool, a primitive layer of your brain will urge you to run away, because someone's going to abuse it and it's going to explode.
Perhaps it shouldn't surprise me that the invention of Perl was followed by the invention of Java, a language in which every potentially powerful construct comes safely wrapped in seven or eight layers of protective ASCII padding, with warning signs on the outside. An overreaction, but an understandable one.
Fortunately, this article is not only not as terrifying as the title would suggest -- it's actually quite clear and enlightening.