It's not a direct dependency in the sense that algebra is a direct dependency of, say, algebraic topology. Instead it's more like a guiding friend. A lot of PL

It's not a direct dependency in the sense that algebra is a direct dependency of, say, algebraic topology. Instead it's more like a guiding friend. A lot of PL theorists are well-versed in algebra and use it at least stylistically to do their work. If you are familiar with algebra you'll recognize it all over. But you can definitely get by without it for a while. The only downside is that you may go a little more slowly due to a general lack of analogies and you may have a difficult time finding resources which don't use algebraic examples. But honestly, a lot of PL (in fact, TAPL) don't really depend upon abstract algebra much at all.