herding cats 

This is a log of me going through Cats, a functional programming library for Scala. I’ll try to follow the structure of learning Scalaz that I wrote in 2012 (!).

Cats’ website says the name is a playful shortening of the word “category.” Some people say coordinating programmers is like herding cats (as in attempting to move dozens of them in a direction like cattle, while cats have their own ideas), and it seems to be true at least for those of us using Scala. Keenly aware of this situation, the cats list approachability as their first motivation.

Cats also looks interesting from the technical perspective. With its approachability and Erik Asheim (@d6/@non)’s awesomeness, people are gathering around them with new ideas such as Michael Pilquist (@mpilquist)’s simulacrum and Miles Sabin (@milessabin)’s deriving typeclasses. Hopefully I’ll learn more in the coming days.