Let me try my 'lift pitch': The best mathematical theorems are the ones that connect fields that seem unrelated, at first sight. We have one such theorem that says that the collection of all functional programs that can be written is "the same" as certain categories and their morphisms. Knowing this bridge-like theorem (The Curry-Howard iso) allows you to solve problems wherever they might be easier and then transfer solutions to the other side. It's a 2-for-the-price-of-one situation!
Valeria On Sat, May 28, 2011 at 8:25 PM, Shannon -jj Behrens <[email protected]>wrote: > I hate to sound like a total newbie, but can anyone give me the 10 > second run down on category theory and why it keeps coming up on > functional programming mailing lists? It seems like a new model or > approach, similar to lambda calculus or monads. I peeked at > Wikipedia, but it didn't help me get the big picture. Does category > theory apply to all the functional programming languages, or is it > just something happening in, say, Haskell or Scala? > > I apologize if this has been covered before. > > Thanks, > -jj > > -- > In this life we cannot do great things. We can only do small things > with great love. -- Mother Teresa > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to "Bay Area > Functional Programmers" > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/bayfp?hl=en -- Valeria de Paiva http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~vdp/ http://valeriadepaiva.org/www/ -- You received this message because you are subscribed to "Bay Area Functional Programmers" To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/bayfp?hl=en
