That's how I describe monads - a programmable semicolon. Basically {A; B} becomes semicolon(A, B). Then you can have hidden state in the semicolon function an

That's how I describe monads - a programmable semicolon. Basically {A; B} becomes semicolon(A, B). Then you can have hidden state in the semicolon function and have complete control of how (and whether) you execute A and B, and in what order.