[Haskell-cafe] Category Theory woes

[Mark Spezzano]

Hi all,

I'm trying to learn Haskell and have come across Monads. I kind of understand monads now, but I would really like to understand where they come from. So I got a copy of Barr and Well's Category Theory for Computing Science Third Edition, but the book has really left me dumbfounded. It's a good book. But I'm just having trouble with the proofs in Chapter 1--let alone reading the rest of the text. 

Are there any references to things like "Hom Sets" and "Hom Functions" in the literature somewhere and how to use them? The only book I know that uses them is this one. 

Has anyone else found it frustratingly difficult to find details on easy-to-diget material on Category theory. The Chapter that I'm stuck on is actually labelled Preliminaries and so I reason that if I can't do this, then there's not much hope for me understanding the rest of the book...

Maybe there are books on Discrete maths or Algebra or Set Theory that deal more with Hom Sets and Hom Functions?

Thanks,

Mark Spezzano.