[noelwelsh]

This seems a pretty good introduction to monads.

There is a cliche that no-one can write a good introduction to monads. I don't think that is true. My opinion is more that monads were so far from the average programmer's experience they could not grok them. I think as more people experience particular instances of monads (mostly Futures / Promises) the mystique will wear off and eventually they will be a widely known part of the programmer's toolkit. I've seen this happen already with other language constructs such as first-class functions. ("The future is here just not evenly distributed.")

[ajnin]

"Introduction to monads" articles generally miss the mark because either 1) they insist on using Haskell syntax throughout, and this is most likely to be unfamiliar and obtuse to programmers looking for this kind of articles. Expecting people to learn a new syntax at the same time as a new concept is bound to be confusing. At least it was for me when I first came across the idea. Or 2) they go through a bunch of examples with various names and number of methods, like Maybe and Collection in this article, and the reader is supposed to infer the common structure themselves. At least this article goes through the formal definition, but I think that ideally that should come first, as it is easier to see the structure of the examples once you have established a mental model.

[dmitriid]

> they insist on using Haskell syntax throughout, and this is most likely to be unfamiliar and obtuse to programmers looking for this kind of articles.

Indeed, that is a big part of a problem.

I find "Functional Programming Jargon" [1] extremely approachable (if you already know modern JS) even though it has been pointed out that their definitions might not be "pure"/correct enough.

[1] https://github.com/hemanth/functional-programming-jargon#mon...

[mlevental]

you know of something like this in Python? I know enough js to read that but I'd prefer python

[dmitriid]

Sadly, no :(

[Insanity]

I like the comparison with first class functions. I do feel like they are more commonly understood nowadays than when I first started programming ~12ish years ago.

I think because languages like Java are evolving towards a world where those things are common, the average programmer is 'forced' to learn those concepts.