Conversation

Sep 12, 2021

I'm back to my old ways again (borrowing a textbook on category theory under the delusion that now this time I'll really have a good motive for learning category theory knowing that I'll read ten pages of it and forget about it until it's due back)

Hanneli Tavante

@hannelita

Sep 12, 2021

I can't tell if I feel personally attacked or accurately represented by this tweet; statement applies polymorphically to other fields (not just category theory) in my case

William J. Bowman @ ICFP

@wilbowma

Sep 12, 2021

I feel like I can only learn a thing when applying it, but in order to apply category theory, I need to learn it, so I’m at a bit of an impasse.

Exactly!

And the problem is that the "applications" in exercises when learning category is always these tiny abstract things about arrows or whatever that I can't keep caring about, but all the applications to TT on do care about seem to first require ALL the basics all at once

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Feels like… how I stumbled into ‘learning’ monads just by using `Option` and `Result` in Rust… rather than trying to learn them from a tutorial with laws etc. I could then better get a handle on the Haskell stuff. Is it possible to get going with category theory like that?

1:36 PM · Sep 12, 2021Twitter Web App

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Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Sep 12, 2021

Nice! One thing I wanna get a handle on is how CT seems to be used a a tool to guide design decisions in PL – I get the feeling that it's kind of used as some sort of skeleton for building type theory stuff off. I keep getting glimpses but lack a deeper understanding.

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