The word itself comes from Category Theory. That's why a comprehensive understanding requires it, since the implementation of the concept in programming derives

The word itself comes from Category Theory. That's why a comprehensive understanding requires it, since the implementation of the concept in programming derives from the definition in CT. The difficulty of understanding the concept is blurred because both the implementation and the mathematical object are called "monad", but they are technically different. The implementation of it could be simplified as many do, but it still doesn't explain the actual math object's definition. The implementation is not as abstract as the math object, which means it is also not as powerful, so it becomes a limited understanding by definition. From my perspective, CT is the math of abstract composition, and is foundational mathematics from which other maths can be derived. This highly abstract nature of it, makes it hard to "simplify" further with an explanation. Monad is already by definition as simple as possible, and it's confusing that its implementations in programming get the same name (although I'm not sure naming it differently would help either).