4 ms·

I think "outstandingly useful" is a bit strong and I think it polarizes people who are on the fence on whether the concept is practically useful or just formali

• dkarl 9y ago
  Setting aside relevance to common problem domains, I'd say monoids (as monads) are the most used mathematical abstraction in programming after sets, functions, induction, total orders, and various forms of graphs. That's pretty outstanding, especially given their B-list status in mathematics. There are dozens of explanations of monads on programming blogs and not nearly as many explanations of, say, rings or models or vector spaces.