3 ms·
Category Theory Illustrated
- asicsp 2y agoSee also these previous discussions (some are for specific chapters): * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41945308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41945308 (252 points | 65 days ago | 83 comments) * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41222528 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41222528 (68 points | 4 months ago | 47 comments) * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37478111 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37478111 (218 points | Sept 12, 2023 | 93 comments) * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35178719 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35178719 (191 points | March 16, 2023 | 107 comments)
- throwaway81523 2y agoSeems tedious and too full of analogies. I'm reminded of that monad tutorial involving space suits. Read this instead: https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Category_theory https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Haskell/Category_theory
- woopsn 2y agoI don't want to come across as harsh because the idea is neat and I'm sure creating this helped the author through their own study/understanding of the subject. But if you want to learn it would be better to study a textbook written by a mathematician. The preamble already contains multiple errors (conflation of general and special relativity, assertion that category theory formalizes the common diagram, assertion that mathematical reasoning underwrites thought itself, assertion physical models are unnecessary/curve fitting is all you need ...) The intro reminds me that V.I. Arnold once accused his algebraist colleagues (quite unfairly), especially in France, were primarily driven by their inferiority complex with respect to the hard sciences. The book would be much better if it didn't begin in this manner. It's valid to study mathematics (or anything of beauty, anything indispensable) for its own sake, of course.