Applied Category Theory • Ken Scambler • YOW! 2019

Ken Scambler delivers a presentation on Applied Category Theory, explaining it as an emerging field focused on the principle of compositionality—building complex systems from simpler components while preserving guarantees. He outlines the core concepts, including monoids and categories, and illustrates these with a case study involving the US military's search and rescue operations, where category theory aids in composing diverse systems like UAVs and helicopters. Scambler also introduces graphical languages like string diagrams and operative wiring diagrams as intuitive tools for visualizing compositional relationships, particularly in software architecture and SQL queries, advocating for the broader application of these compositional concepts across various domains, especially software development and operations.