I found that odd too. In Haskell you have to use monads only for I/O, and for that IMO they are a fine abstraction. (Monads are a fine abstraction to many other

I found that odd too. In Haskell you have to use monads only for I/O, and for that IMO they are a fine abstraction. (Monads are a fine abstraction to many other things too that have a lot less to do with side-effects.) You are free to use other more general/specialized abstractions in every other part of your code.