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As regards your "2." I have often thought that Randall Munroe's approach with "Thing Explainer"[1] would serve (for the rest of us) a number of computer science theory dominated software areas exceedingly well. (how about "monad" using Munroe's strict 1000 word list?[2])

[1] https://xkcd.com/thing-explainer/

[2] http://splasho.com/upgoer5/phpspellcheck/dictionaries/1000.d...

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Thing Explainer is good because it is fun to read words which explain a thing that you already mostly understand in a way that you would not usually see. It can also help you see things from a point of view that you wouldn't usually have. However, when used to write about things that you don't already know about, it will probably not make it easier to understand, and may just make it less clear what is being written about.

Monads aren't actually complicated tho, they're just abstracted from reality a bit (unlike, say, object-oriented inheritance). It's much more useful to actually write a few monads yourself than read articles about them.

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