How not to explain Haskell monads

[mvanier]

One of the key concepts in Haskell that sets it apart from other programming languages is the concept of a "monad". People seem to find this difficult to learn (I did as well), and as a result there are loads of monad tutorials on the web, some of which are very good (I particularly like All About Monads by Jeff Newbern). It's even been said that

Comments

[pozorvlak]

While people learning Haskell may not have encountered monads before, they may very well have encountered examples of monads, particularly if they come from a mathematical background - every algebraic theory (groups, rings, Lie algebras, monoids, etc) gives rise to a monad on Set, and in fact every adjunction gives rise to a monad. They might not know what adjunctions are either, but they should certainly learn, given how ubiquitous they are in mathematics :-)

[mvanier]

Ah, you clearly know more about category theory than I do. I agree with you, but to make this clear to someone learning the material for the first time would take some work. However, I do think that mathematically-inclined programmers ought to learn category theory.