The interpretation I have come to use, which I'm sure isn't a perfect one, is that a Monad is a means to wrap Data in a Context before applying Computation to i

The interpretation I have come to use, which I'm sure isn't a perfect one, is that a Monad is a means to wrap Data in a Context before applying Computation to it. A Maybe monad's context is that the data might not be there. A List or Stream, the context is multiple values. A Future/Promise, asynchronous application of the computation. Writing software this way is a bit more generic because you can swap the data, computation, or context while leaving the rest the same. This is very much a "what is it good for?" answer for anyone who doesn't have a strong functional programming background.