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Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

I actually laughed out loud when I got to that part. It seemed like the first page and a half he really tried to explain it without jargon and then just gave up.

To be fair, though, who is going to read an introduction to category theory that isn't familiar with abstract algebra?

Someone should write 'an introduction to introductions to category theory'

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> Someone should write 'an introduction to introductions to category theory'

More like the "Prereqs for an Intro to Category Theory."

The author intended his remark that the work is "for readers with relatively little mathematical background" to mean that his readers aren't assumed to have previous exposure to category theory, not that they have zero math.

He's reiterating the Basic in the title "Basic Category Theory."

Category theory is like the refactoring of a lot of math to express commonalities with a view toward recognition and reuse.

The Gang-of-Four OOP patterns book would also seem abstract for anyone sans programming experience.

Me! I know some abstract algebra, but I'm not going to understand it without some hand-holding. Remind me what a ring is and how and why it relates to categories.

"There exist only two kinds of modern mathematics books: ones which you cannot read beyond the first page and ones which you cannot read beyond the first sentence." -- Chen Ning Yang

Since Yang's name is probably not familiar to most HNers, I'll just add that he's a theoretical quantum physicist; Nobel Price in 1957, etc etc.

Bob Coecke writes good introductions to category theory, you might find some of his stuff enjoyable. Although he is often also introducing quantum physics and linguistics at the same time.

This paper is fascinating:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1602.07618

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