My view on this is that Category Theory is more of a framework for your brain rather than for your computer. As the founders of the theory had noted, categories

My view on this is that Category Theory is more of a framework for your brain rather than for your computer. As the founders of the theory had noted, categories were introduced as a basis for explaining what a functor is, and functors were needed to explain the phenomenon of natural equivalence. It is indeed practically useful to program your brain in such a way that you could better discern common patterns and be able to see that what you are trying to do is equivalent to something you’ve done before; being able to express this directly in code when possible (depends on the language) comes as an added benefit.