> Free monads permit unlimited introspection and transformation of the structure of your program; Free monads allow minimal specification of each semantic layer, since performance can be optimized via analysis and transformation.
That is not true and this overselling of the Free monad is hurting the concept.
The Free monad is nothing more than the flatMap/bind operation, specified as a data-structure, much like how a binary-search tree describes binary search. And this means an imposed ordering of operations and loss of information due to computations being suspended by means of functions.
You see, if the statement I'm disagreeing with would be true, then you'd be able to build something like .NET LINQ on top of Free. But you can't.
That is not true and this overselling of the Free monad is hurting the concept.
The Free monad is nothing more than the flatMap/bind operation, specified as a data-structure, much like how a binary-search tree describes binary search. And this means an imposed ordering of operations and loss of information due to computations being suspended by means of functions.
You see, if the statement I'm disagreeing with would be true, then you'd be able to build something like .NET LINQ on top of Free. But you can't.