Maybe a is a parameterized type that can hold either the value Nothing, or a value Just a . Seems simple enough - it's an optional value.
But it goes deeper than that. Look at an object of type String in Java. This object's type is actually larger than String - it can either represent a string of characters or the special value null. Languages like Java, Ruby, and C# all make the mistake of allowing any type at all to hold null. This greatly diminishes the value of static typing, since any call of the form string.length() will sail happily past the compiler and then throw the dread NullPointerException at runtime if passed a null. The compiler will never see it coming, and your program could work for some time before you discover the problem.
But in Haskell, we must be explicit. By default, an object of type Integer can only hold an integral value - there is no null, and no possibility of a runtime null pointer exception. The Haskell compiler will not even produce a program if you try to pass Nothing into a non-Maybe type. A datatype cannot be instantiated with null values unless you explicitly allow it to hold them.
This eliminates an enormous class of errors. Anyone who has maintained a large Java application instinctively shudders at the prospect of an NPE - the value could have become null at any point in the program and resolving it requires extensive tracing.
Further, in order to avoid the possibility of an NPE, you must litter your code with distracting and unnecessary conditionals like:
if( foo == null ) throw new IllegalArgumentException( ..
if( foo.bar() == null ) throw new IllegalArgumentException( ... );before doing any real work. But what's worse is that you're turning a programming error into a runtime exception. The fact that your program compiles does not guarantee that you will have no NPE's and running it does not guarantee that you will hit every branch that might generate one.
In Haskell, it is simply impossible to write a program that is susceptible to NullPointerExceptions at runtime unless you explicitly make the type in question optional by wrapping with Maybe.
