On 7 Jun 2008, at 08:05, Ronald Guida wrote:
What made monads "click" for me is when I understood the following things:
Well, in case anybody's interested, I didn't know anything about monads before I tried to read the book "Toposes theory" (not sure about the exact name, I've read it in Russian) by P.T. Johnstone. It's Chapter 0 contained some facts about monads without proofs or even definitions. I've looked for some definitions in Mathematical Encyclopedia, asked one of my professors about other ones, tried to prove all results in this chapter by myself (successfully), and, suddenly, found out that I understand what monads are. Then, while reading YAHT, I've thought a bit, then realized, that Haskell monads are the same beast I already know (I didn't know about Kleisli triples before), and everything was clear.