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For Haskell you're absolutely right however I was responding to the OPs comment that controlling effects in general is over the top.

The issue of composing effects, along with the widespread fear of monads, are enough for me to conclude that monads are not the best way to control effects.

I don't remember ever seeing any solutions other than monads and deprecate effect systems, hence my preference for the later.

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The progress that has been made in Haskell in the past decade leads me to believe that the issues with the current system can be solved with better abstractions, and possibly new syntax. Or if the solution isn't possible in Haskell, that it will be born of a similar philosophy.

I don't yet know whether fear of monads is something the programming community will grow out of, or whether there is a more fundamental reason people have difficulty with them. From what I've seen, the response of most people on finally "getting" monads is "Wait that's it?", so I'm inclined to believe a significant part of the hurdle is the fear itself.

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