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Category Theory by Tom LaGatta

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49K subscribers • 9 videos on Hallway

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  • Recommended by 6 people: 3 on Hacker News, 1 on Lobsters, 1 in engineering communities and 1 curated list.
  • A classic. People kept recommending it from 2014 to 2017.
  • Presented by Tom LaGatta

Intermediate. Assumes working knowledge.

72K views12 years ago6 recommendations

Computer scienceProgramming languagesFunctional programmingMath for programmersComputation and complexity

Tom LaGatta introduces the fundamental concepts of category theory, including objects and morphisms, in an informal and conversational talk.

Filmed at the March 11, 2014 LispNYC meetup at Meetup HQ in NYC. ABOUT DATA COUNCIL: Data Council (datacouncil.ai/) is a community and conference series that provides data professionals with the learning and networking opportunities they need to grow their careers. Make sure to subscribe to our channel for more videos, including DC_THURS, our series of live online interviews with leading data professionals from top open source projects and startups. FOLLOW DATA COUNCIL: Twitter: twitter.com/DataCouncilAI LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/datacouncil-ai Facebook: facebook.com/datacouncilai Eventbrite: eventbrite.com/o/data-council-30357384520 - 🎟️ GET YOUR TICKET TO AI COUNCIL 2026 🎟️ Meet the world's top AI infrastructure minds where architects of AI share what works. Three days of high-quality technical talks and meaningful interactions. → aicouncil.com/sf-2026 ⚡ FIND US: X: x.com/AICouncilConf LinkedIn: linkedin.com/company/aicouncilconf/ Website: aicouncil.com/

Why it's here

6 people recommend this

What people say. Recommended as an exceptionally accessible and friendly introduction to category theory for programmers.

u/CharlesStainin r/haskell • Recommends

Category Theory by Tom LaGatta
62View on Reddit

programming-talkscurated list on GitHubRecommends

Under “Mathematics”

Category Theory 01:36:54 by **Tom LaGatta** (2014)
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RiderOfGiraffeson Lobsters • Recommends

Category Theory by Tom LaGatta
5View on Lobsters

mjhoyon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Thinking in Types”

I couldn't really tell you anything about category theory. But I am beginning to grasp monads. (At least in the context of Haskell programs.) I think the important thing is to see how they work, see what they do. btw, you might try this video: link to this video
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gosubon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Mathematics is full of wonderful but relatively unknown theorems”

Category theory by Tom LaGatta1 is also a nice introduction. He suggests taking a look at the nLab website2, a wiki of Maths and Physics from the categorical point of view. 1 link to this video 2 link
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aputsiakon Hacker News • Recommends

On “Category Theory, Syntactically (2016)”

nLab has been one of the best sources I've come across. My aim is to express and work with philosophical logic in a more formal way, and nLab is a great source for that as well. Milewski's YouTube lectures gets mentioned a lot, but I couldn't make much sense of them before watching Tom LaGatta's more informal and conversational presentation link to this video Good luck and keep at it.
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antimoraon Hacker News • Mentions

On “A concise introduction to category theory”

Tom LaGatta in this video on Category Theory listed this website as number one resource on category theory. link to this video There he also lists some books on category theory. I am putting a direct link when he mentions the references.
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u/quiteamessin r/compsci • Mentions

On “[Help] I want to learn about programming languages theory”

I don't know if there is a comprehensive book on type theory. You can just check out coq and learn it with tutorials or youtube videos. If you want something more fundamental HoTT is a good idea. But it's hard to get into it because it connects different branches of math (category theory, type theory and topology). I got interested in category theory while learning Haskell. There is a good summary on the haskell wiki. After this talk on category theory I began to understand what it is about. 'General abstract nonsense' is a bit odd at the beginning but after adding some meat (e.g. examples of instances like Tom LaGatta is giving) it starts to make sense.
1View on Reddit