I did`nt care about the underlying theory behind monads once I learn that the easy way to understand them is trough desugarization. Desugarize the "do" notation, after that, desugarize the >>= and >> operators down to the function call notation and suddenly everithing lost its magic because it becomes clear that a haskell monad is a sugarization of plain functional tricks.
But it seems that the trick is so productive because it comes from some fundamental properties of math, the reality, and maybe the human mind . Jost now I found this article:
That definitively gives me the motivation to learn category theory seriously.
Alberto
2010/8/7 Michael Mossey
<mpm@alumni.caltech.edu>
When I started to study Haskell, I was surprised that so much emphasis was placed on simple things. Monads were introduced to me as basically a wrapper, and a bind function that unwrapped something and wrapped something else back up again. I didn't understand what the fuss was about. Later I saw the amazing feats of expressiveness that were possible. I scratched my head in confusion---"Wait, say that again?"
Here's a quote from Bertrand Russell about philosophy (read: Haskell). He's actually being humorous, but it applies, in a way:
"The point of philosophy is to start with something so simple as not to seem worth stating, and to end with something so paradoxical no one will believe it."
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