Categories and computer science

What Hacker News says

1. theohOct 2018
   Just another opinion on this: I don't think "Category Theory for Programmers" is that great from a pedagogical perspective. I get that its freely accessible, but like the "Haskell from First Principles" book, the quality of the exposition is a bit questionable.

   Call me old-fashioned, but when it comes to learning math, I believe it pays to seek out people who really know how to teach the subject, rather than (what might uncharitably be described as) self-promoters churning out half-baked introductory materials. This goes for the "Catsters" video series as well. Everybody points to them as if they're brilliant, but compared to what standard? Sometimes it feels as if the people who blithely link to these resources are indifferent to whether the teaching is good or bad.

   Even Mac Lane's book "Categories for the Working Mathematician" has been credibly criticised for being poorly written—but because it's so famous/prestigious it still gets loads of five-star reviews.

   Personally, I'd recommend Categories and Computer Science by RFC Walters, or Steve Awodey's Category Theory for a more general overview.

   (This might all sound peevish, but it feels like a real hazard of trying to learn difficult things from the web: the most conspicuous and superficially charismatic offerings/lecture notes/blogs don't always turn out to be reliable or well thought-out when it comes to an average person actually trying to learn the material.

   Monads are a good example of this bad situation. A good way to learn about monads would be to have a few, shortish, interactive conversations with an expert. Ten thousand cute online monad analogy tutorials is the opposite of this: it's actively counterproductive because each new analogy just creates more vagueness and FUD.)

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2. ch0wnFeb 2015
   I found "Categories and Computer Science" by R. F. C. Walters to be the perfect complement to Chapter 0 as it's almost entirely proof and example driven.
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3. theohNov 2018
   The idea of taking the derivative of an algebraic data type is also discussed in "Categories and Computer Science" from 1992: https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/categories-and-computer...

   That discussion covers some of the same ground as the Taylor series idea elsewhere in thus discussion. It doesn't get as far as inventing the zipper concept.

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4. emmelaichOct 2017
   This is the book. The preview is limited though and I can't find the editor reference directly.

   Categories and Computer Science R.F.C Walters, 1992 https://books.google.com.au/books?id=FurEQgAACAAJ&dq=edition...

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