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# Introduction: Daniel Blank

edited May 2018 in Chat

Hello from Germany!

I am a student of Computer Science, currently in grad school. My main interest is the verification of computer programs and programming languages. This is also the first motivation why I want to learn more about CT (category theory): It has applications in both of these areas. My second motivation is that I am a lazy ("cost-efficient") person; I don't like learning redundantly. If something is the same as another thing, I want to think about these two things at the same time, and not have them float around as two seemingly separate concepts. CT seems like a great tool to learn about similar things. Unfortunately my math background is weak, but I love the kind of results one arrives at in CT and as a visual person, diagram chasing is great!

I am currently trying to find the balance between academia, side projects and other parts of life - so I am afraid I can't guarantee to be as active as I'd like. I will try my best to keep pace tho and hopefully will be able to ask the one or other interesting question.

Last, I am really looking forward to learn CT with all of you! :)

PS: As a programmer, my preferred way of understanding concepts is implementing them as an algorithm. I would be really interested in programming the learned concepts. Hopefully I find the time myself, or maybe someone else has already started something like this. A starting point for implementing categories could be this: http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~david/categories/

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edited May 2018

Hi Daniel, in the Caltech study group we've been discussing taking a computational approach as well, using Haskell as a language. We'd like to probably do some exercises and work things out computationally. It would also be great to translate some of this book into Haskell, as that seems to be the language of choice in this area. I've never written a single line of Haskell so I will be a beginner again! We'll probably create a repo tomorrow maybe to get started, and hopefully everyone that is interested can join in. We'll also probably post in Categories for the working hacker discussion group as well.

Comment Source:Hi Daniel, in the [Caltech study group](https://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/2066/applied-category-theory-course-caltech-study-group#latest) we've been discussing taking a computational approach as well, using Haskell as a language. We'd like to probably do some exercises and work things out computationally. It would also be great to translate some of this book into Haskell, as that seems to be the language of choice in this area. I've never written a single line of Haskell so I will be a beginner again! We'll probably create a repo tomorrow maybe to get started, and hopefully everyone that is interested can join in. We'll also probably post in [Categories for the working hacker](https://forum.azimuthproject.org/discussion/1782/categories-for-the-working-hacker-a-discussion-group#latest) discussion group as well.
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Hi Grant!

Glad to hear that I am not alone in this undertaking. I hope I find time to contribute. My dream goal would be: Code up the CT so that one can easily (!) view one construction in different categories. Then we could view the constructs introduced in this class in any category we care to encode.

I've never written a single line of Haskell so I will be a beginner again!

You are in for a treat! I have not written many lines of Haskell yet, but grogged the basic concepts - writing Haskell is a joy if you like to reason about your code in a sane way.

Comment Source:Hi Grant! Glad to hear that I am not alone in this undertaking. I hope I find time to contribute. My dream goal would be: Code up the CT so that one can easily (!) view one construction in different categories. Then we could view the constructs introduced in this class in any category we care to encode. > I've never written a single line of Haskell so I will be a beginner again! You are in for a treat! I have not written many lines of Haskell yet, but grogged the basic concepts - writing Haskell is a joy if you like to reason about your code in a sane way.
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Yes, I don't get the feeling that I will hate Haskell :-)

Drop in on the study group and we'll try and post links to the stuff we are doing, it would be nice to get a lot of Jupyter notebooks going, and of course more discussions.

Comment Source:Yes, I don't get the feeling that I will hate Haskell :-) Drop in on the study group and we'll try and post links to the stuff we are doing, it would be nice to get a lot of Jupyter notebooks going, and of course more discussions.