[magnusjonsson]

For the first point, I think the author is aware that you can do more than just mutable state using monads:

> But mutable state covers everything that is not pure computation and that includes debug statements, input and output, system calls, network access, getting the time of the day or even throwing an exception. So the monad you are using has to provide all these services. Of course not every monad has everything you need so you have the IO monad, the Maybe monad, the STM monad, and so on. Whenever you have a C binding, you get a monad.

The second point example doesn't seem to address the author's concerns. The author is complaining about what happens when you try to compose N components that all disagree on the model of computation. OCaml has a more practical default model of computation so less such plumbing is needed.