What is a monad?

Question

Having briefly looked at Haskell recently, what would be a brief, succinct, practical explanation as to what a monad essentially is?

I have found most expla

Answer 1

I am still new to monads, but I thought I would share a link I found that felt really good to read (WITH PICTURES!!): http://www.matusiak.eu/numerodix/blog/2012/3/11/monads-for-the-layman/ (no affiliation)

Basically, the warm and fuzzy concept that I got from the article was the concept that monads are basically adapters that allow disparate functions to work in a composable fashion, i.e. be able to string up multiple functions and mix and match them without worrying about inconsistent return types and such. So the BIND function is in charge of keeping apples with apples and oranges with oranges when we're trying to make these adapters. And the LIFT function is in charge of taking "lower level" functions and "upgrading" them to work with BIND functions and be composable as well.

I hope I got it right, and more importantly, hope that the article has a valid view on monads. If nothing else, this article helped whet my appetite for learning more about monads.