For any aspiring Haskell programmer out there, my advice is to stay away from any blog posts describing Monads using analogies of some kind. The fact is that you do not have to "understand" monads in order to write practical programs that use the IO monad or even something more complicated like Parsec. I've seen too many people stop using Haskell when it's time to start doing something that isn't purely functional because they have been afraid of going to unfamiliar territory.
Here's a simple two part exercise that should give you enough of an understanding about the basics of using IO and give you a general idea about monads.
1. Write a "guess the number" game
2. Write it without "do" notation, using (>>=)
That's it. If you're at all like me, this should give you a better start than reading theory about the subject. Now that you have a basic understanding about the practice, it's easier to grok the theory.
And even if you do not understand the theoretical aspects of it by now, you know enough IO to be able to read and write files, connect to the internet using sockets or do some HTTP requests. That opens a lot of possibilities.
Here's a simple two part exercise that should give you enough of an understanding about the basics of using IO and give you a general idea about monads.
That's it. If you're at all like me, this should give you a better start than reading theory about the subject. Now that you have a basic understanding about the practice, it's easier to grok the theory.And even if you do not understand the theoretical aspects of it by now, you know enough IO to be able to read and write files, connect to the internet using sockets or do some HTTP requests. That opens a lot of possibilities.