That's actually a pity, because monads are easy to understand, being just like a normal design pattern ... name your favorite one and it's probably harder to understand than monads, because monads are actually well defined.
I was also giving Scala as a better language to experiment with such things, because the funny thing about Scala is that monads are more composable in comparison to Haskell or other functional languages.
I've spent more time trying to understand monads than all the named design patterns put together. And I don't have a favorite design pattern, just a vague skepticism for the lot of them, and a strong skepticism for anyone who promotes them.
Anyway, being well-defined is not a sufficient condition for being easy to understand.
I was also giving Scala as a better language to experiment with such things, because the funny thing about Scala is that monads are more composable in comparison to Haskell or other functional languages.