Crosscut

When talking about imperative-looking functional code, I think it makes sense to mention do-notation again. It is an alternative syntax (available in Haskell, for example) that enables just that. But it never made sense to me. Why have two syntaxes? If neither by itself is good enough, what does that say about your language?

My unofficial language design consultant Adrian told me recently, that do-notation was added to Haskell as a later alternative to the "prime" syntax, and that indeed he's using it as the default. So maybe this is part of a larger trend towards more imperative syntax in functional programming. (Although there seems to be some controversy.)

Either way, it's clear there's some need for a more imperative style of functional programming. And maybe algebraic effects can fill that role for new languages. Without the need for adding an alternative notation, which I definitely don't want to do in Crosscut.