Saturday 13 June 2015

Monads - Asking the Right Question, with Pawel Szulc

On Monday, 1st June, I went to an evening presentation given by Pawel Szulc at Skillmatter regarding Monads in Scala (the videocast of it is here).


It's an obscure subject and not one I really understand, and this presentation didn't help much (too many cognative leaps, like reading a technical book with most of the pages stuck together).

Monads are a kind of contract or pattern, encapsulating a data type in a consistant interface. The interface consists of two functions: a "bind" or "flatMap" function that, given a translation function, allows another monad to be created from the first; and a unit function which creates the monad from the original type in the first place.

Pavel's got a thing about monads and tried to explain how they can be used as a design technique, but I think it's something that going to take a bit more than a presentation to explain. A monograph on the subject, perhaps. Clever bloke, though.

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