What is so special about Monads?

Question

A monad is a mathematical structure which is heavily used in (pure) functional programming, basically Haskell. However, there are many other mathematical structures available, l

Answer 1

Monads are special because of do notation, which lets you write imperative programs in a functional language. Monad is the abstraction that allows you to splice together imperative programs from smaller, reusable components (which are themselves imperative programs). Monad transformers are special because they represent enhancing an imperative language with new features.