When taken in the context of programming in Haskell, category theory is not really that important IMHO. Yes, the words are strange, but once you know what they

When taken in the context of programming in Haskell, category theory is not really that important IMHO. Yes, the words are strange, but once you know what they mean, they are just words. For example (again, in the context of programming) a functor is just a collection with a function that removes the contents out of the collection, transforms it (into anything) and puts it back into the collection. A monoid is just a functor (ie collection) that can hold zero or more values. A monad is monoid (collection that can hold zero or more values) with a function that takes the contents out of the collection, transforms it into something of the same type and puts it back into the collection. Category theory is really just useful because it shows you the building blocks. Some functors are not able to be used as monads. It's useful to have some intuition as to why. Even some things like applicative (a functor with a function in which you can successively apply multiple parameters) pop out and give you some useful insight (non-applicative functors can't be monads -- it's not obvious why until you try to implement it). There is value in this organisation. The words are not fantastic, but again, they are just words.