[squillion]

If they were called "flatmappable" (which is essentially what they are), people wouldn't complain so much about monads. But in Haskell you have to bend over backwards just to set a variable you think should be in scope, or to log something to the console, and monads are involved in achieving that kind of things.

Haskell is hard - monads in themselves not really.

[gklitz]

Yes, if only people called it something different. Quantum mechanics similarly immediately understandable if you just call it mechanics of discrete amounts. No need to read a lot of books, do a lot of math or calculation. You now know quantum mechanics at a fundamental level because I have told you the magical recital of a boiled down version. I’ll get back to you with a link to my blog explaining why university courses on the subject should just be replace with a picture of a cat and my magical phrase which will have the same effect.

Honestly do you not even see how naive this idea is that the only thing standing between a subject that literally everyone spends a ton of time on getting good understanding of is a renaming or a catch phrase? Even people who read tons of blogs of “actually it simple just…” end up spending time getting to know it. And every one of those people writing those blogs spent a ton of time on it which is why they are writing blogs about their “eureka moment” that will forever make the subject and instantly learned matter.

[squillion]

I think you misunderstood my point...

There are so many things in programming that are hard to grasp at a deep level, but don't look scary to beginners (who misuse them without realizing). Monads look scary so they take all the blame. I'm not really proposing this, but I guess if monads were called something like "flatmappable", the focus would perhaps shift to the more difficult parts of Haskell: at the root, immutability and purity, and on top of that, the deluge of abstractions and ways to compose them. It wouldn't make Haskell any easier... it would just save the poor monad all the bad rap.