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Whenever I have tried any text about category theory, it seems to me that it is a catalogue of one definition after another. I am yet to come across (or perhaps
by sriram_malhar 4y ago
Whenever I have tried any text about category theory, it seems to me that it is a catalogue of one definition after another. I am yet to come across (or perhaps missed it entirely) an example use of any of these definitions in practical terms, other than their use in the next definition.
It is quite possible that one requires a lot of set up before any it can be used for practical purposes (e.g explaining the basis for all of Haskell's prelude), but I have never made it that far. But I would like to ...
I'd appreciate hearing from those of you who are programmers at heart and have hung in there long enough to gain some insight. What clicked for you?
- dirkt 4y agoI've also seen this in many books. When I learned it at university, we had lots of examples, but you need to be already familiar with a lot of somewhat abstract mathematics (monoids, groups, rings, sets, homomorphisms, ...) before you see how it unifies those. Category theory is called "general abstract nonsense" for a reason. You can think of it as "expressing other mathematics in terms of arrows and commuting diagrams".