Category Theory Texts as Complement to Algebra Course

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Suppose someone is reading something at the level of Knapp’s Basic Algebra, and they know the basic objects of Algebra: groups, rings, but not quite yet fields, would it be a good time to pick up a Categorical Text? If so, what Category Theory book would you recommend?

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You can pick up a category theory text book at any time, do not let people tell you otherwise. I would not read most of the very old category theory texts, since they are not very beginner friendly. A good choice if you learn abstract algebra anyway is to look into

  • Paolo Aluffi, Chapter 0

It is a book which aims to combine abstract algebra with category theory. Another very good book is

  • Emily Riehl, Categories in Context

It contains many examples from different fields of mathematics, in particular also from abstract algebra. You will have it a lot easier in abstract algebra when you understand the Yoneda-lemma, universal properties and adjunctions very well. For the start there is no need to learn anything more specialised, and you also do not have to learn any of the theorems like the monadicity theorem, or the special adjoint functor theorem. Just being able to comfortably prove statements by chasing hom-sets is worth a lot.