Towards a comprehensive theory of monadic effects

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference abstract in proceedingsResearch

It has been more than 20 years since monads were proposed as a unifying concept for computational effects, in both formal semantics and functional programs. Over that period, there has been substantial incremental progress on several fronts within the ensuing research area, including denotational, operational, and axiomatic characterizations of effects; principles and frameworks for combining effects; prescriptive vs. descriptive effect-type systems; specification vs. implementation of effects; and realizations of effect-related theoretical constructions in practical functional languages, both eager and lazy. Yet few would confidently claim that programs with computational effects are by now as well understood, and as thoroughly supported by formal reasoning techniques, as types and terms in purely functional settings.

This talk outlines (one view of) the landscape of effectful functional programming, and attempts to assess our collective progress towards the goal of a broad yet coherent theory of monadic effects. We are not quite there yet, but intriguingly, many potential ingredients of such a theory have been repeatedly discovered and developed, with only minor variations, in seemingly unrelated contexts. Some stronger-than-expected ties between the research topics mentioned above also instill hope that there is indeed a natural, comprehensive theory of monadic effects, waiting to be fully explicated.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationProceedings of the 16th ACM SIGPLAN international conference on Functional programming
Number of pages1
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery
Publication date2011
Pages1-1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2011
EventInternational Conference on Functional Programming - Tokyo, Japan
Duration: 19 Sep 201121 Sep 2011
Conference number: 16

Conference

ConferenceInternational Conference on Functional Programming
Nummer16
LandJapan
ByTokyo
Periode19/09/201121/09/2011

ID: 45950831