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Do any of the following awesome programmers know and purposefully use category theory: - Linus Torvalds - Joshua Bloch - Fabrice Bellard - John Carmack - A
by Confusion 14y ago
Do any of the following awesome programmers know and purposefully use category theory:
- Linus Torvalds
- Joshua Bloch
- Fabrice Bellard
- John Carmack
- Alan Kay
- Peter Norvig
- Paul Graham
- Rich Hickey
If not, then I think there are many different things that would make you a better programmer, before learning category theory is worthwhile to learn.
Let's also ask the reverse question: name an awesome programmer, preferably with an open source example of his code, that knows and uses category theory.
- jonsen 14y agoDid any of the following awesome scientists know and purposefully use calculus: Galileo, Kepler ...
- Confusion 14y agoCalculus didn't exist in their time, so it couldn't be used by them. Moreover, much progress has been made in science, partly due to calculus. In fact, an awesome scientist today is much more powerful than an awesome scientist back then. Can you show examples of practical progress made in computer science due to category theory? A bugfree web server, a secure web browser, an OS perhaps?
- DanWaterworth 14y agoIf you attack the question this way you can come up with crazy beliefs like, "you have to be a man to be a good programmer".
- Confusion 14y agoI was refuting a claim of a necessary condition by showing numerous counterexamples. In case of your crazy belief, coming up with such a list would be an attempt to prove a necessary condition by showing numerous examples. That is not logically valid. A list of counterexamples is.
- DanWaterworth 14y agoThe claim isn't that, "CT is necessary", it's "CT is beneficial".