4 ms·

I get the complaint. In the old days people would sometimes say “abstract nonsense” when talking about category theory related topics. It’s increasingly an im

I get the complaint. In the old days people would sometimes say “abstract nonsense” when talking about category theory related topics. It’s increasingly an important part of a basic mathematical education at the graduate level. Eventually there may be a spillover into other areas like computer science where so called practical uses occur. But maybe not. It’s still too early to say. There’s a famous book called Categories for the Working Mathematician. Maybe someday there will be a book called Categories for the Working Programmer. I like that you call it the string theory of math. It’s a more modern way of saying “abstract nonsense”.

consilient 3y ago
> I like that you call it the string theory of math. It’s a more modern way of saying “abstract nonsense”. The sociological analogy is a decent one - they're both ambitious sub-fields of little interest to the average practitioner, with a handful of committed opponents and a wildly overgrown internet hatedom - but their positions in their respective disciplines aren't remotely similar. String theory is a physical theory like any other: pick a spacetime, fill it with dynamical objects, impose some symmetries, and away you go. Category theory, at its most ambitious, wants to be a setting for doing ordinary mathematics in: it belongs in the same general grouping as set theory and higher order logic, not calculus or linear algebra.
dkjaudyeqooe 3y ago
There's this, but the programmer doesn't have to be working: https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-programmers-the-preface/ https://bartoszmilewski.com/2014/10/28/category-theory-for-p... https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp-pdf https://github.com/hmemcpy/milewski-ctfp-pdf