[Haskell-cafe] Think of a monad...

Dear Haskellers, In the recent HWN, I noticed a new monad metaphor by Don Stewart: Think of a monad as a spacesuite full of nuclear waste in the ocean next to a container of apples. now, you can't put oranges in the space suite or the nucelar waste falls in the ocean, *but* the apples are carried around anyway, and you just take what you need This metaphor very clearly captures the essence of monads. Perhaps it will be even more helpful if accompanied by a small illustration: http://koweycode.blogspot.com/2007/01/think-of-monad.html I hope this turns out to be useful to somebody, -- Eric Kow http://www.loria.fr/~kow PGP Key ID: 08AC04F9 Merci de corriger mon français.