Introduction
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Monads in programming seem to be the most mysterious notion of the century. I find two reasons for this:

  • lack of familiarity with category theory;
  • many authors carefully bypass any mention of categories.

It's like talking about electricity without using calculus. Good enough to replace a fuse, not good enough to design an amplifier.

 

This crash course starts with an easy introduction to categories and functors, then we define a monad, then give some basic examples of monads in categories, then present monadic terminology as used in programming languages.

 

I am sure that if you approach the topic from categorical point of view, everything will look almost elementary.

Vlad Patryshev, 3/7/2006 - 2/12/2007

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Here is a pdf version of this slide show.