From: Daniel Lewis <danieljohnlewis@...>
Date: 2005-09-30T22:32:29+09:00
Subject: Re: In your opinion....

"   But if you really want to understand how it works, you
need to understand the monad, which is quite an esoteric mathematical
notio    " - Christophe Grandsire

I thought I had heard of Monads before, I found this:
"   Leibniz's theory does not posit physical space; rather, physical
objects are constructs of the collective experiences of monads. This
way of putting it is misleading, however; monads do not interact with
each other (are "windowless"), but rather are imbued at creation with
all their future experiences in a system of pre-established harmony.
The arrangements of the monads make up the faith and structure of this
world, which to Leibniz was "the best of all possible worlds".   " -
Wikipedia

I've read about Leibniz before.

Wikipedia also says:
"
    * in non-standard analysis, a monad consists of all those numbers
infinitesimally close to a given number;
    * in category theory, a monad, also known as triple, is a type of
functor important in the theory of adjoint functors. This term has a
different root than the ones described above; it was formed by
combining "monoid" and "triad". See monad (category theory).
    * In pure functional programming languages such as Haskell, monads
are used as data types that encapsulate the functional I/O-activity,
in such a manner that the side-effects of I/O are not allowed to
spread out of the part of the program that is not functional
(imperative). See monads in functional programming.
"
I am still intrigued to find out how this would work in Ruby... maybe
something to do before I start my dissertation in April (2006). Has
anyone used Ruby in a "functional" way before?

My experience of Ruby so far:
* I have been using it for about 2 months now, I have made two
commercial applications:
(1) An additional component to a C++/Qt program to connect to a MySQL
database and collect data and turn it into a CSV file. It uses the
MySQL/Ruby module.
(2) A configuration file maker for (1): writes (and reads) XML files
to be read by (1) as configurations. It uses REXML and WxRuby.
* I have played about with using Ruby to connect to sockets. I have
also tried to use Ruby/tk but couldn't quite grasp it properly.

Ruby has been really good for what I have used it for so far. But will
it be able to withstand the development I do in it for my
dissertation???

Thanks for all your answers... please continue to discuss, its really
interesting.