I'd quibble with this, but that's probably largely because I used Hudak's "Haskell School of Expression" book as my road into Haskell, which seems to generally

I'd quibble with this, but that's probably largely because I used Hudak's "Haskell School of Expression" book as my road into Haskell, which seems to generally aim for readability at the expense of making everything into a monad. I gather it would be considered a bit of an outdated style now, but in retrospect I think it eased me into the pool.