[Haskell-cafe] On the verge of ... giving up! [OT]

[Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH]

On Oct 14, 2007, at 23:13 , Richard A. O'Keefe wrote:

> (5) Precisely because it seeks generality, category theory seems
>     difficult to "concrete thinkers".  And books on category theory
>     tend to be extremely fast-paced, so ideas which are not in  
> themselves
>     particularly esoteric (which may in fact be eminently practical)
>     tend to be presented in a way which people trying to study by
>     themselves have trouble with.  So people can be scared off by
>     what _ought_ to be a big help to them.

I would really like to see "category theory for the working  
*non*mathematician".  I have essentially zero formal programming/CS- 
theory or mathematical training, and while sucking knowledge up like  
a sponge is often a good thing (especially for me as a practicing  
sysadmin), it does leave me at a bit of a disadvantage when you start  
maximally generalizing everything in sight at me, especially when you  
do so in esoteric mathematical language that leaves me going "buh?"

-- 
brandon s. allbery [solaris,freebsd,perl,pugs,haskell] allbery at kf8nh.com
system administrator [openafs,heimdal,too many hats] allbery at ece.cmu.edu
electrical and computer engineering, carnegie mellon university    KF8NH