[jcburnham]

> I find it hard to reconcile these goals with the language you created: Monads, applicatives etc

You know, I've never understood the the "Monad is hard" meme. Monad isn't hard. Functor is hard. Like, really hard, especially when you consider contravariance and covariance. Monad is like a tiny little teaspoon of hard on top of the swimming pool of Functor hard.

But does any of that complexity prevent you from calling `Option::map` in Rust or `Array.prototype.map` in JS? Or from seeing the pattern between them?

"I have an A and a function A -> B, so I can make a B."

"I have a List A and a function A -> B, so I can make an List B."

"I have an Option A and a function A -> B, so I can make an Option B."

"I have an F A and a function A -> B, so I can make an F B."

Is that too steep of a hill for people? I don't think so. It may not be intuitive, but neither is learning to read and write, and it turns out that virtually everyone can do that with enough practice.

Yatima is not an intuitive language, but it is very simple, whereas a language like Python is much more intuitive, but vastly more complicated. My take is that the former set of properties makes for a more learnable system than the latter. Maybe I'm wrong on that, who knows, but to me it seems like a thesis worth exploring.

> And you need corporations to build the device you are currently using to reply. We do our jobs on the shoulder of giants. Thousands of corporations in a world-wide link that provide the necessary resources and know-how to build computers. Not sure how that rhymes with "computing should belong to individual users".

I appreciate the intricate dance of capital behind making the devices we're communicating on. That is not what I'm talking about when I say "computing should belong to individuals rather than corporations." I simply mean that users should have control and agency of what they do on the computing instruments they buy, in the same way they have control and agency of what they do with the writing instruments, or musical instruments they buy.

Or in concrete terms, I have nothing against Apple selling me an iPhone, great piece of hardware. But I do think that once I buy the phone, it's mine and I should be able to run what I want on it, without the phone telling Apple what I'm doing. It's a question of mental autonomy and integrity; I'm extending my mind through the device, so if Apple controls the phone it's like they control a piece of my mind.

For a programming language this philosophy informs a lot of decisions, particularly regarding build system servers. Consider for example that in JS npm is owned by Microsoft, whereas in Rust crates.io is owned by the Rust Foundation. I think the latter is better than the former. But I think the way Yatima's package management works over the decentralized IPFS network is better than either.