> Does anyone else have some examples of things they learned which seemed really difficult but turned out to be really simple in hindsight? Sure: everything.

> Does anyone else have some examples of things they learned which seemed really difficult but turned out to be really simple in hindsight? Sure: everything. Everything is complicated until you learn it, and then it looks simple in hindsight. You're just confirming what OP said: it's not easy to come across an article explaining monads or Haskell that doesn't implicitly rely on the fact that the reader already understands monads or Haskell.