I agree that they often make things seem harder then they really are. The monad tutorial that works best for me is the "don't mention monads" tutorial. Thats th

I agree that they often make things seem harder then they really are. The monad tutorial that works best for me is the "don't mention monads" tutorial. Thats the one where you just show some specific task to complete, like composing (a -> Maybe b) functions, and show that there is a neat operator that does it. Then, at some future time, show another composition task, like composing (a -> [b]) functions, and show the same operator again. Starting with the abstract just messes people up and gets them confused. You don't start throwing around Kleisli Arrows and endofunctors right off the bat.