spewffs's comments

Yes monads in general are too expressive but the answer isn't to limit the typeclass to something between applicative and monad but rather to limit what monads are allowed. The problem is that there should only be one monad: an effect monad loaded with various effects depending on the side effect needed. Instead of defining this or that monad, there should only be the capability to define the effect you need.

In that case, everything runs within the effect monad and then no one would ever really need to learn what a monad is, just that some calls are effectful (like reading a file or throwing an exception).

What other books would you suggest? I've been reading TTAFP for a few months now and I don't like it very much. I was thinking maybe starting to read Principles of Dependent Type Theory by Angiuli and Gratzer but I'm not sure if it really covers the same area.