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Has anyone here ever used category theory in a business (or any purpose other than publishing papers)? (Don't give me "I used a monad once while programming", I

Has anyone here ever used category theory in a business (or any purpose other than publishing papers)? (Don't give me "I used a monad once while programming", I mean the kind of stuff that book is about)

jksk61 3y ago
these kind of books are "philosophical" books. In the sense that the usage can be written/explained in other ways. For instance, monads are just a way to see that if you compose two ducks you still have ducks that behave in the same manner, but that's almost the same thing as having a class and define the composition arrow as a method. The only difference is that with CAT you have theorems asserting what's true and what's not, with classes I don't think there's much literature. A similar reasoning can be applied to neural networks as there are very different POV: someone will look at them as ODE systems, other as a pure discrete dynamical system or as an optimization problem or whatnot.
corethree 3y ago
I've used it to optimize SQL. The principles I used in SQL can be used in other places as well. I think functors are easier to understand and more fundamental to category theory and programming than monads.
- contravariant 3y ago
  Monads are fairly simple as well if you use C#'s brilliantly chosen names SELECT and SELECTMANY for the two relevant maps.
  - agumonkey 3y ago
    > SELECTMANY is that a form of flatmap ?
    - mormegil 3y ago
      That's exactly it, SelectMany is what in .NET corresponds to flatMap in e.g. Java. (And, unlike the parent, I don't like the narrow scope of .NET naming very much, focusing on just the list monad (a.k.a. IEnumerable).)
agumonkey 3y ago
The idea of sharing structural properties/invariants between abstractions is something that is in my mind often, and reading the book intro resonates with me.
throwaway626 3y ago
[dead]
zmgsabst 3y ago
Domain Driven Design is essentially applied category theory: You develop a language that models your domain, translate that into a diagram, and translate that diagram into code. (Okay, actually topos theory since you’re going between type theories and diagrams — but you use the diagrams to move between type theories and define “equivalent structure”.)
wisnesky 3y ago
We use it for data integration https://www.categoricaldata.net https://www.categoricaldata.net

jksk61 3y ago

these kind of books are "philosophical" books. In the sense that the usage can be written/explained in other ways. For instance, monads are just a way to see that if you compose two ducks you still have ducks that behave in the same manner, but that's almost the same thing as having a class and define the composition arrow as a method. The only difference is that with CAT you have theorems asserting what's true and what's not, with classes I don't think there's much literature. A similar reasoning can be applied to neural networks as there are very different POV: someone will look at them as ODE systems, other as a pure discrete dynamical system or as an optimization problem or whatnot.

corethree 3y ago

I've used it to optimize SQL. The principles I used in SQL can be used in other places as well. I think functors are easier to understand and more fundamental to category theory and programming than monads.

contravariant 3y ago
Monads are fairly simple as well if you use C#'s brilliantly chosen names SELECT and SELECTMANY for the two relevant maps.
- agumonkey 3y ago
  > SELECTMANY is that a form of flatmap ?
  - mormegil 3y ago
    That's exactly it, SelectMany is what in .NET corresponds to flatMap in e.g. Java. (And, unlike the parent, I don't like the narrow scope of .NET naming very much, focusing on just the list monad (a.k.a. IEnumerable).)

agumonkey 3y ago

The idea of sharing structural properties/invariants between abstractions is something that is in my mind often, and reading the book intro resonates with me.

throwaway626 3y ago

[dead]

zmgsabst 3y ago

Domain Driven Design is essentially applied category theory: You develop a language that models your domain, translate that into a diagram, and translate that diagram into code. (Okay, actually topos theory since you’re going between type theories and diagrams — but you use the diagrams to move between type theories and define “equivalent structure”.)

wisnesky 3y ago

We use it for data integration https://www.categoricaldata.net https://www.categoricaldata.net