On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 8:32 PM, Patrick Lynch
Good morning,
I've actually have 6 books in my library. They are: 1. "Algebra Third Edition" by MacLane and Birkhoff [I couldn't get anything out of this book] 2. "Categories for the Working Mathemetician - Second Edition" by Mac Lane [I could get through the first chapter and then gave up] 3. "Conceptual Mathematics - A first introduction to categories" by Lawvere and Schanuel [The first chapter was understandable but the following chapters were completely undecipherable] 4. " Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists" by Pierce [I could get through all three chapters but couldn't do the exercies - and could not see how CT applies to Haskell {especially, Monoids, Monads and Functors}] 5. "Categories and Computer Science" by Walters [This one made me cry] 6. "Category Theory" by Awodey [Again, I could only get through the first chapter]
I tried viewing the videos by Eugenia Cheng - but I just couldn't follow her presentation. I also viewed another video entitled Hasket and CT - but it was given by a mathematican and I couldn't follow this fellow - I'll have to get the link for this. I finally viewed a video by Brian Beckman in regard to FP [eg: F# and Haskell - and mentions C# as a comparison non-FP language], specifically, in regard to Monoids and it was great - however, he didn't go into CT - but he did recommend that the viewer pursue it.
I'm really not interested in all of the categories in the world...I specifically am interested in how CT applies to Hask, Monoids, Monads and Functors. All of the Haskell authors that I've read have 'ducked' the CT issue - mentioning that it is not necessary to understand Haskell. I often was left with the thought: are they correct or do they simply not understand CT. If you know of a Computer Scientist [and, please, not a Mathematician] who has written in regard to Haskell and CT, please let me know.
Not an exact answer... still here are a couple http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~david/categories/index.html http://arxiv.org/abs/1102.1313 Also Sannella and Tarlecki's http://books.google.co.in/books/about/Foundations_of_Algebraic_Specification_a.html?id=85CLRvu5QxUC&redir_esc=y I cannot say I recommend any very strongly. Sannella and Tarlecki seems to be good but Ive yet to study it The first 50 or so pages of this http://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/3-540-17162-2//page/1 was useful to me. I have no access to it now Rusi -- http://www.the-magus.in http://blog.languager.org