Applied Category Theory Course
I&#x27;m writing a book [1] about &quot;bona fide&quot; applications of mathematics to practical programming problems, where bona fide is my own personal definition [2]. I&#x27;ve had my eye on claims of applications of category theory for many years, and none of them have quite fit the bill (sorry, John, if you&#x27;re reading this). When they talk about applications to databases it seems quite unrealistic or lacking in sufficient detail to evaluate. And when I talk to people who are actually on the front lines that try to use category theory to solve some problem, they tell me that it ended up being completely useless.<p>I&#x27;m open to having my mind changed. The one application that&#x27;s come the closest is UMAP, [3] though the last time I checked, a few years ago, the jury was still out on whether the structure it produces in applied contexts like biology is spurious.<p>So what specific applications do you know of category theory to practical problems? For the purpose of this post &quot;application&quot; means used by someone in a production software setting to solve a problem not related to category theory. Someone who doesn&#x27;t care about category theory should care about the problem being solved.<p>And, to be sure, category theory is fine an dandy in its applications to other areas of math, as a unifying language for homology and whatnot. I&#x27;m talking about the kind of claims category theory folks sometimes make like &quot;category theory is ushering in a programming revolution and you need to learn it to stay relevant&quot;<p>[1]: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmfpbook.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;pmfpbook.org&#x2F;</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;buttondown.email&#x2F;j2kun&#x2F;archive&#x2F;whats-in-production&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;buttondown.email&#x2F;j2kun&#x2F;archive&#x2F;whats-in-production&#x2F;</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;umap-learn.readthedocs.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;umap-learn.readthedocs.io&#x2F;en&#x2F;latest&#x2F;</a>