Brian Beckman: Don't fear the Monad

Apples and oranges. A monad is just an idea; that of storing computations as values. This is useful because these computations can be composed together in a manner not unlike that of a pipeline in shell scripting. Different monads define different ways of composing these computations leading to vastly different semantics. Here's a nice video that explains monads fairly simply: this video

> and apparently I'm never going to understand Haskell I found this introduction to the concepts of functional programming (functional composition) to be useful: this video Otherwise, it's just a different way of thinking about problems. Instead of building things structurally as an object of objects, and then creating functions that relate, transform, or describe the relationships between the object structures (like taking a pixel object, altering it's x coordinate, and returning the new pixel object with only the x coordinate altered), one has functions that can be composed with other functions to produce more complex object structures. A single base unit with a sequence of functional compositions can describe a very fancy, complex unit, with many fancy, complex characteristics. >> Monads have also been explained with a physical metaphor as assembly lines, where a conveyor belt transports data between functional units that transform it one step at a time.[2] They can also be seen as a functional design pattern to build generic types.[3] link Otherwise, it's syntax and semantics, which I generally find annoying, but there's always google and books. link

This whole video is worth watching, but a simple monoid overview is here: this video It's not a difficult concept.

I've seen the same video before i knew what a monad was, it helped me in understanding the use case of monad and ultimately monad. Monad is just a generalization of that particular use case. Some resources that helped me in understanding monads 1. Brian Beckman: Don't fear the Monad - this video 2. Functors, Applicatives, And Monads In Pictures - link 3. Three Useful Monads - link So its been not just one resource but multiple resource before it hit me that it was such a simple concept. So i would suggest to go over them (in order) and also look at other resources (mentioned by others).

I'd suggest a longer (1 hour) but much more correct explanation. It doesn't use math beyond high (or even may be middle) school. Video, unfortunately. this video

In a Group, every element has an inverse element. If you drop this property, you get a Monoid.[0] Functions under function composition form a Monoid (or Monoidal Category). Brian Beckman did a nice intro video to this at MS Channel 9 a few years back.[1] [0] link [1] "Brian Beckman: Don't fear the Monad" this video

Thats me here too! >.< Yeah the hidden subtext here was my presumption in that suggestion was someone was learning monads in Haskell and has at least a basic understanding of Haskell. Sorry if those papers threw you into the deep end. Monads really were thrown into play due to trying to make a pure functional programming language useful. I found the more mathematical explanation a lot easier than any analogies involving say burritos or pipes etc... At first glance to imperative programmers I will admit all of this just looks like a bunch of navel gazing. I thought the same thing, but once you let go of thinking of computation as a series of steps and at a bit of a higher abstraction this makes a lot more sense. For a more soft introduction to the concepts this channel 9 video is probably a bit better: this video Another option might be to just get the haskell programming from first principles book: link Does a good job grounding you up to monads and gives copious amounts of reference material. Even though I already knew haskell when I read the book it helped clear up some gaps I didn't know I had. But monads are going to be really weird no matter if all you've ever seen is imperative programming. Despite the fact that you already use them and have probably discovered them without knowing you did. Much like learning stack based programming languages, sometimes the only way up is to climb off the computational hill you're familiar with to learn another way to the other hill side

this video I found Brian Beckman's video Don't Fear the Monad was extremely helpful for understanding monads as a practical user. I now use them everywhere. I don't know the first thing about category theory.

Good tutorial I think and I also appreciated reading the beginning of link and watching "Don't fear the Monad" this video