This is the most exciting technical thing I've seen this week. Stephen Diehl has built an algebraic effects language, #prism , that might actually be usable.
I've been excited about algebraic effects since Bauer and Pretnar's 2012 paper. Haskell's stacks of monad transformers always looked to me like a first-generation hack: yes, we have the technology that could fix the Awkward Squad, but we don't know yet what to do with it. Algebraic effects seemed like they could be the way forward.
But I tried programming in Eff and found it impossible to make anything work.
Even if Prism isn't practical for practical programming, it's a big step forward, and worth a look just for the ideas.
#haskell #algebraicEffects #programmingLanguages
www.stephendiehl.com/posts/prism/
Mark Dominus
@mjd@mathstodon.xyz
