Re: [Haskell-cafe] Pierce on type theory and category theory

On Tue, 2007-09-25 at 16:18 -0500, Creighton Hogg wrote:

On 9/25/07, Philippa Cowderoy wrote: On Tue, 25 Sep 2007, Seth Gordon wrote:

> Are Benjamin C. Pierce's _Types and Programming Languages_ and/or _Basic > Category Theory for Computer Scientists_ suitable for self-study? >

Basic Category Theory depends on your mindset somewhat. TaPL is great though, and frequently recommended. The follow-up is also good.

Basic Category Theory is cute, but I think the exercises are sometimes phrased strangely. In some ways, the book makes more sense if you've already seen these ideas once & are trying to get a more CS perspective of the math. I'll probably be alone in this, but I think Mac Lane is a fantastic book for learning category theory. It's hard, but if you trudge along and do the exercises you learn quite a bit. It's fun!

I didn't learn Category Theory from Mac Lane (Categories for the Working Mathematician for those out of the know), but I agree that it is a very good introduction and an enjoyable read. It does have good exercises. It should also make a passing good reference.