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I work at Target and we have a weekly class on algebra, category theory and Haskell because people are interested. It's a mix of programmers learning some of th
by tikhonj 10y ago
I work at Target and we have a weekly class on algebra, category theory and Haskell because people are interested. It's a mix of programmers learning some of the math and mathematicians learning some of the programming :).
It's actually a lot more accessible than it seems at first—these ideas are not complex, just abstract. Thinking at a high level of abstraction is very much a skill which requires specific training, but it's a skill worth training and, when you have it, learning things like this becomes much easier.
The same thing is true of programming, by the way: once you start "thinking like a programmer", it becomes much easier to learn a new programming language or to understand some low-level programming concepts. And thinking like a programmer is, in the grand scale of things, not that different from thinking like a mathematician!
- snowcrshd 10y agoThat sounds awesome! Is Haskell (or other fp languages) commonly used at Target?
- whateveracct 10y agoI don't work there, but my understanding is their supply chain automation/optimization uses Haskell.
- acchow 10y agoI work at Target and we have a weekly class on algebra, category theory and Haskell because people are interested Wow, Target sounds like it has a nerdier crowd than Facebook.
- pitaj 10y agoThis is the most unexpected thing I've ever heard about Target.
- zengid 10y agoIs this at the HQ in Minneapolis? I hope to move back to MN someday (to raise the younglings) and you make Target sound awesome!
- dllthomas 10y agoNah, it's in the south bay. I've been to some meetups there.
- tikhonj 10y agoCurrently we're a small team mostly based in Sunnyvale, but we're also partly distributed and have some people in Minneapolis. This has been a bit awkward for the class specifically because teaching people over Hangouts turns out to be hard, but there is certainly some cool work going on in Minneapolis.
- mitchty 10y agoAs someone in the Twin Cities, BAH, I was hoping to find more haskellers around. Oh well, I'll keep trying to get more FP stuff in where I work at least.