[danieltanfh95]

The obsession with trying to explain a monad ultimately stems from conflicting explanations and the inability to differentiate between a mathematical monad and monads implemented in software.

Monads in software are just a standard API for any given type. That’s it. Theres no magic here. Just implement the standard and you have a monad.

It grinds my gears seeing monad tutorial after tutorial using the wrong metaphors or misleading explanations

[petesergeant]

> Monads in software are just a standard API for any given type. That’s it. Theres no magic here.

I don’t think that’s helpful for people to understand _why_ monads though, and that’s generally what people are looking for.

[danieltanfh95]

a standard api is the magic. when you can talk to anything via a standard api it creates uniformity and standard blocks you can build from

[lmm]

Associativity is important, and not something that can be expressed in the API in most languages.

[danieltanfh95]

Associativity is part of the contract/specifications of said "standard API"