> I thought the point of monads was that they provide a mechanism for introducing side effects gracefully into a pure language
That's roughly a description of the IO monad, which is a specific monad. The IO monad is really a degenerate case, and most monads ( List, Cont, Maybe, Writer, State, ... ) have nothing to do with effects.
Half the problem of talking about monads is that in their full generality they're really just a description of a trivial algebraic structure that doesn't really impart much intuition. Monads just get a lot of press because they're one of the simplest examples of a structure that can't be compressed easily in terms of common experience. There's nothing I can point to in our our everyday experience and say "monad" is like this.
That's roughly a description of the IO monad, which is a specific monad. The IO monad is really a degenerate case, and most monads ( List, Cont, Maybe, Writer, State, ... ) have nothing to do with effects.
Half the problem of talking about monads is that in their full generality they're really just a description of a trivial algebraic structure that doesn't really impart much intuition. Monads just get a lot of press because they're one of the simplest examples of a structure that can't be compressed easily in terms of common experience. There's nothing I can point to in our our everyday experience and say "monad" is like this.