2014: Pointed (was: 2014 Applicative => Monad proposal)

[Oliver Charles]

On 05/24/2013 04:28 PM, Roman Cheplyaka wrote:
> I completely agree with Edward here.
>
> * Edward Kmett <ekmett at gmail.com> [2013-05-24 11:20:51-0400]
>> For the record I'm actually -1 on including Pointed.
>>
>> My experience is that there are very few uses for the class that permit you
>> to reason about your code without one-off ad hoc reasoning based on the
>> particular instance you are given. Now, the Apply and Bind classes on the
>> other hand... =) Though, to be fair, I couldn't seriously propose including
>> either of those, either. Even I can't be bothered to instantiate them all
>> the time!
>>
>> -Edward
So maybe we should turn this around and ask those who were +1 on this 
specific item - why do you want Pointed?

For me, I've occasionally wanted a uniform interface to things like 
"Set.singleton", with the ability to switch that to lists because 
sometimes that makes things easier to play with in GHCi. Arguably a weak 
point, but that is what's tempted me with it before.

What are the other problems that Pointed solves?
- ocharles