[Haskell-cafe] Intuition to understand ...

[martin]

Am 07/27/2014 09:22 PM, schrieb Jochen Keil:

> In case it's the Continuation monad Chris mentioned (and I think he's right)

I believe so too. But I still have trouble understanding it. Let's forget about this particular monad for a while and
focus on intuition in general.

I managed to dissect the continuation monad and write the bind operator correctly. But it took me hours and the train
of thought is very elusive. I wouldn't call this "understanding".

When I truly understand things I can come up with analogies, counter examples and the like. I can draw diagrams to
visualize the thing. I can embed the new thing into a world of old things.

But I cannot do any of these things with the Continuation Monad. Right now I am trying to get there by staring at it,
asking myself questions, trying to write bind in different ways - hoping that one day it will click.

Someone on the web said that this (hard work) is the only way. Douglas Crockford said that monads come with a curse,
that is as soon as you understand them you loose the ability to explain them to anyone else. Someone else said, the
way to a monad's heart is through its Kleisli arrow.

So I wonder what you guys do to develop intuition about tricky haskell things, such as the Continuation monad.