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Having been in both worlds, I politely disagree. Almost all programmers have no use for category theory. Or even algebraic structures. It simply doesn't help with the problems programmers face. Categories are a tool for mathematicians, by mathematicians.

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Evan Patterson

@ejpatters

Aug 11, 2019

I would frame the question differently, since I don't think the answer is monads (sorry Haskellers!). Why is it helpful for programmers to know about algebraic structures? Because structures are useful for modeling the world, and programs implicitly contain models of the world. twitter.com/wtgowers/statu…

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I'd love to hear about a time you solved a problem using a semilattice. How was that particular abstraction useful in a way that it was difficult without it?

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How is that not just regular abstract algebra?

10:41 PM · Aug 11, 2019Twitter Web App

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It might be, but I am open to the idea that they phrased it better using category theory to account for exceptional cases, or time dependence, or some other pesky real world aspect.

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The textbook I'm looking at on static analysis (cs.au.dk/~amoeller/spa/) spends a chapter explaining lattices, and formulates many ideas in terms of them. I've yet to get deep enough to have an opinion how useful the algebraic background is.

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and

Ohhh, I misunderstood. Yeah, abstract algebra is useful for so many things. I don't think that's a controversial statement.

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