61–70 of 136 posts
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Label the string as a functor and think about lifting the array into the string functor and doing string manipulation to change it to a dict, then lift it back into a dict type. String manipulations of a lifted type in "string space" can be faster and more efficient then actually manipulating it in "type space"
What?
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I think you may be missing something here. > The "theorems" they then prove do not provide any new insight Knowing that you can model reaction networks using categorical concepts may not provide new insights IF you have no deep familiarity with those concepts—but if you do, then knowing there is a "symmetric monoidal functor from the category Petri to the category Dynam" is a richly useful piece of information. It's…
> Knowing that you can model reaction networks using categorical concepts may not provide new insights IF you have no deep familiarity with those concepts—but if you do, then knowing there is a "symmetric monoidal functor from the category Petri to the category Dynam" is a richly useful piece of information. Look, I completely agree with the general point. I love new ways of thinking about things. But blindly applyin…
Category theory is rarely going to be the best way to do any kind of science, but it does nonetheless allow one to make statements which are true across many domains, without getting bogged down in the details of any particular subject.
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I've quite literally spent the last month trying to read, digest, and apply the above to a record layer I'm writing for FoundationDB. Dr. Spivak's work has been absolutely beyond helpful and insightful. There's no way I'd even be able to approach the subject with his efforts. I'd also recommend these as they're associated with the 7 Sketches and help fill in some blanks: Functorial Data Migration - https://arxiv.org/…
is the source code of the record layer available somewhere?
It's totally not compatible with Apple's record layer I don't use protobufs at all (though there's a good case to be made for using them even despite the article from today's frontpage, heh).
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I've quite literally spent the last month trying to read, digest, and apply the above to a record layer I'm writing for FoundationDB. Dr. Spivak's work has been absolutely beyond helpful and insightful. There's no way I'd even be able to approach the subject with his efforts. I'd also recommend these as they're associated with the 7 Sketches and help fill in some blanks: Functorial Data Migration - https://arxiv.org/…
You linked to the 1166.pdf twice, did you mean to link to http://math.mit.edu/~dspivak/informatics/notes/unorganized/P... for "Category Theory as Unifying Database Formalism"?
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> Knowing that you can model reaction networks using categorical concepts may not provide new insights IF you have no deep familiarity with those concepts—but if you do, then knowing there is a "symmetric monoidal functor from the category Petri to the category Dynam" is a richly useful piece of information. Look, I completely agree with the general point. I love new ways of thinking about things. But blindly applyin…
General relativity doesn’t help anyone throw a basketball better, but that’s not what it’s for. Category theory is rarely going to be the best way to do any kind of science, but it does nonetheless allow one to make statements which are true across many domains, without getting bogged down in the details of any particular subject.
Yes, of course! And as a physicist, I don't ask basketball players to use general relativity.
But I'm responding to a post claiming the category theory really is useful, directly, for science. And just like the basketball player, I'm saying that it really isn't.
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>but it isn’t exactly as friendly to the non-mathematicians as advertised. i really chafe at criticisms like this given how much effort was clearly invested by those authors in that book being readable - there are ample definitions (and clearly offset), tons of diagrams, instructive examples, solutions to many exercises, pointers to further readings, motivation and discussion. is the thing that bothers you that there…
> "this book is too unfriendly to people that don't program because it has lots of code and expects people to be able to read code" That would be a perfectly valid response to the claim that the book "is very clear and friendly for non-coders". I don't understand why you are chafed.
Watched that guy's lectures and conference talks. While it's quite interesting and educative - I still don't get the "for programmers" part of it. I don't quite get how I would jump from understanding categories, morphisms, monoids etc. to building actually better systems. There are zero practical examples in his talks. Is it because i'm not using functional languages or what am I missing here?
Can someone please explain to me the excitement for category theory in this forum? I've gone through the first 10 chapters + exercises of this book, and truth be told the content is interesting but the ROI is low for programming (FWIW I started this book as part of a study group in a large unicorn co, and after approximately one month I was the only person left grinding through the exercises, hoping for some payoff).…
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> "this book is too unfriendly to people that don't program because it has lots of code and expects people to be able to read code" That would be a perfectly valid response to the claim that the book "is very clear and friendly for non-coders". I don't understand why you are chafed.
what kind of book that teaches programming could possibly have no code in it? that's not just "friendly" that's completely completely lacking substance.
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what kind of book that teaches programming could possibly have no code in it? that's not just "friendly" that's completely completely lacking substance.
I imagine everyone agrees with you on that. You responded to an objection to a characterization of the book, not a criticism of the book for failing to match that characterization nor a claim that a book on the topic should be able to match it.
>That would be a perfectly valid response to the claim that the book "is very clear and friendly for non-coders".
no it wouldn't because it would be vacuously misplaced because there is no such book that aims to teach programming (friendly or not) and doesn't have code.