[asgard1024]

I think what you have to understand is that monad is quite an abstract concept. It is possible to give a specific example of a monad, but from the specific example, you won't fully understand it.

Here's the first sentence in the documentation for Java's Comparable interface: "This interface imposes a total ordering on the objects of each class that implements it."

This assumes people know what a total ordering is. Total ordering is an abstract mathematical concept, not really more or less abstract than a monad. Clearly then, people don't have problems grasping abstract concepts. They just learn the definition and possibly bunch of examples and they're done.

I think the real divide happens because people in programming praxis are simply skeptical to the claim that monads are a useful abstract concept to learn and use in programming. Many years ago, some of them probably thought they don't need to know what a total ordering is.

I don't think anything can be done with the skepticism other than either take the claim at a face value, and accept that monads are a useful concept, or verify that claim by learning Haskell for instance.

[kstenerud]

Therein lies the problem. Until a Feynman with the skill to teach this in an accessible way takes on the subject, we'll remain at an impasse. This is really a UX problem.

"If you can't explain it simply, you don't know it well enough"

- Albert Einstein

[goto11]

> Clearly then, people don't have problems grasping abstract concepts. They just learn the definition and possibly bunch of examples and they're done.

I think the crux is explaining how the abstraction is useful. The Comparable interface doc explains it in the very next sentence: Lists (and arrays) of objects that implement this interface can be sorted automatically by Collections.sort (and Arrays.sort). Every Java programmer can understand this and see its purpose

The difference is that in Java and most other languages abstract mathematical concepts are treated as means to an end, not a goal in itself.