Actually "spicy container type" is maybe a better definition of Monad than you may think. There's a weird sort of learning curve for Monads where the initial reaction is "it's just a spicy container type", you learn a bit and get to "it is not just a spicy container type", then eventually you learn a lot more and get to "sure fine, it's just a spicy container type, but I was wrong about what 'container' even means" and then settle back down to "it's a spicy container type, lol".
"It's a spicy container type" and "it's anything that is flatmappable" are two very related simplifications, if "container" is a good word for "a thing that is flatmappable". It's a terrible tautological definition, but it's actually not as bad of a definition as it sounds. (Naming things is hard, especially when you get way out into mathematical abstractions land.)
There are flatmappable things that don't have anything to do with ordering or sequencing. Maybe is a decent example: you only have a current state, you have no idea what the past states were or what order they were in.
Flatmappable things are generally (but not always) non-commutative: if you flatmap A into B you get a different thing than if you flatmap B into A. That can represent sequencing. With a Promise `A.then(() => B)` is different sequence than `B.then(() => A)`. But that's as much "domain specific" to the Promise Monad and what its flatmap operation is (which we commonly call `then` to make it a bit more obvious what its flatmap operation does, it sequences; A then B) than anything fundamental to a Monad. The fundamental part is that it has a flatmap operator (or bind or then or SelectMany or many other language or domain-specific names), not anything to do with what that flatmap operator does (how it is implemented).
Monads have nothing to do with order (they follow the same ordering as Haskell's normalization guarantees).
> JavaScript decided to standardize on a Monad-shaped "thenable" specification for representing asynchronous processes,
Its impossible for something to be monad shaped. All asynchronous interfaces form a monad whether you decide to follow the Haskell monad type class or decide to do something else. They're all isomorphic and form a monad. Any model of computation forms a monad.
Assembly language quite literally forms a category over the monoid of endo functors.
Jacquard loom programming also forms a category over the monoid of endo functors because all processes that sequence things with state form such a thing, whether you know that or not.
It's like claiming the Indians invented numbers to fit the addition algorithm. Putting the cart before the horse, because all formations of the natural numbers form a natural group/ring with addition and multiplication formed the standard way (they also all form separate groups and rings, that we barely ever use).
This is the kind of explanation that drives me absolutely batshit crazy because it is fundamentally at odds with:
> Do you understand "flatmap"? Good, that's literally all a monad is: a flatmappable.
So, I think I understand flatmap, assuming that this is what you mean:
https://www.w3schools.com/Jsref/jsref_array_flatmap.asp
But this has absolutely nothing to do with "certain things are supposed to happen after other things", and CANNOT POSSIBLY have anything to do with that. Flatmap is a purely functional concept, and in the context of things that are purely functional, nothing ever actually happens. That's the whole point of "functional" as a concept. It cleanly separates the result of a computation from the process used to produce that result.
So one of your "simple" explanations must be wrong.
And you are correct. Monads have nothing to do with sequencing (I mean any more than any other non commutative operator -- remember x^2 is not the same as 2^x)
Haskell handles sequencing by reducing to weak head normal form which is controlled by case matching. There is no connection to monads in general. The IO monad uses case matching in its implementation of flatmap to achieve a sensible ordering.
As for JavaScript flat map, a.flatMap(b).flatMap(c) is the same as a.flatMap(function (x) { return b(x).flatMap(c);}).
This is the same as promises: a.then(b).then(c) is the same as a.then(function (x) { return b(x).then(c)}).
Literally everything for which this is true forms a monad and the monad laws apply.