> Fixing mine requires understanding how `do` and `<-` interact, which I remain skeptical can be done without exposing oneself to monads. I think this is the m

> Fixing mine requires understanding how `do` and `<-` interact, which I remain skeptical can be done without exposing oneself to monads. I think this is the major point of contention between us. I don't think that understanding how to use `do` requires "understanding monads". My example was to demonstrate that understanding how to use `do` for the IO monad is not really much different from understanding how to write a sequence of statements in Python. There's one big difference: you have to use both `<-` and `let`, and you have to know that the former is used to get a value out of something of type `IO a` and the latter is just normal variable binding. But that still doesn't require "understanding monads"! It just requires knowing there's a special thing called `IO` that wraps things with effects. I do think that understanding how to use `do` for arbitrary monads requires understanding monads! But that was not required to solve the problem lmm originally proposed, nor your extension. I also do think that most pedagogical Haskell material focuses too much on "understanding fine details" and that applies particularly to monads. My point is that another approach is possible. That is simply to use `do` notation intuitively via analogy with imperative languages (which is a perfectly fine thing to do).