I can agree with that. I suppose I believe, from my own personal experience, that a categorical approach to monads, even if they are distinct from Haskell `Monad`s, is a very good way to learn more advanced concepts in understanding Haskell Monads.

I don't think either article is great place for a beginner, but instead am coming from a point of view toward learning "advanced" functional programming and getting a flavor for categorical/squiggol style thinking. To me, it was greatly helpful to just see the pure math approach and then realize Haskell Monads as a simple example and less useful to see categorical concepts played out in the simplified Haskell domain.

Categories just don't make nearly as much sense as objects when all you see them as is a convenient way to talk about composition rules. They're dramatically powerful when you connect them to preorders, databases, graphs, or homology. My biggest moment of categorical bliss came from seeing the Paths monad on graphs, even though that is far removed from the programming domain.