A list is a monad

The obsession with trying to explain a monad ultimately stems from conflicting explanations and the inability to differentiate between a mathematical monad and monads implemented in software.

Monads in software are just a standard API for any given type. That’s it. Theres no magic here. Just implement the standard and you have a monad.

It grinds my gears seeing monad tutorial after tutorial using the wrong metaphors or misleading explanations

Associativity is important, and not something that can be expressed in the API in most languages.

> Monads in software are just a standard API for any given type. That’s it. Theres no magic here.

I don’t think that’s helpful for people to understand _why_ monads though, and that’s generally what people are looking for.