2010/9/9 Николай Кудасов :

Consider this book:

Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists (Foundations of Computing) -- Benjamin C.Pierce

Hi David, Николай Кудасов is quite right—Pierce's book is excellent. Apart from being a good introduction to category theory, it's worth buying for the fourth chapter alone, which is an annotated bibliography of textbooks, introductory articles and reference works on category theory. It would be an excellent guide to where to go next after finishing Basic Category Theory. Graham Hutton also taught a course on category theory at MGS 2010, and his slides are online. I found them quite enlightening, and they move at a good pace for a beginner, with an appropriate level of formality. http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/cat.html Category theorists tend to give lots of examples from abstract algebra, so a basic understanding of some algebraic structures is, I've found, a lot of help when trying to appreciate category-theoretic ideas. Hope this helps a little. Benedict.

Thank you for this suggestion. I do have this book. I found it to be a little lacking in some areas in that it felt like I was reading a student's lecture notes, not the professor's. At some point, I'm left with questions that there's no one around to answer :-). This is why I'm trying to go deeper. I think it's a great one to have on your bookshelf though for quick refreshers! Dave 2010/9/8 Николай Кудасов

Hi, Dave!

Consider this book:

*Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists (Foundations of Computing)http://www.amazon.com/Category-Computer-Scientists-Foundations-Computing/dp/...-- *Benjamin C.Pierce

This is at the moment the only book about category theory I've read, but it was easy for me as for programmer rather than mathematician to understand most of the stuff. Now I am reading "Categories for the Working Mathematician" and just can't go further 50-60 pages, cause for understanding rest of the book I must understand examples given in the book, and those are mainly from group theory, topology and functional analysis. As I am slightly familiar with any, first I need to learn some other mathematics. So if you are rather programmer than mathematician, I think you'd better start with book I mentioned above. Otherwise you should stock up with lots of books about less abstract mathematics =)

With best regards, Nick

David Leimbach wrote:

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In my amazon shopping cart I currently have: *Conceptual Mathematics: A First Introduction to Categories<http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/052171916X/ref=ord_cart_shr?ie=UTF8&m=ATVPDKIKX0DER

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*- F. William Lawvere

Lawvere is widely regarded as being very accessible. The introductory chapter can be read online at Amazon, if you want to get a flavour. I've only read a couple of chapters of it myself, in a borrowed copy, but I was impressed. Regards, Malcolm