Easiest (most forgiving?) way to learn category theory?

Question

I'm not a maths student, but I've read a bit on category theory and I'd love to learn about it.

Is there any book that's simple enough for a busy student to pick up and learn the fundamentals? What are the prerequisites? Thanks!

Answer 1

A great book is Conceptual Mathematics. It starts from the very very basics and moves to incredibly complex category theory concepts.

Furthermore, it requires almost no prerequisite knowledge.

Answer 2

If you are looking for a more algebraic point of view, George Bergman at UC Berkeley has a good introductory text you can find here https://math.berkeley.edu/~gbergman/245/index.html

with a free pdf copy to download. It does, admittedly, assume some basic undergraduate abstract algebra knowledge but if you're asking about category theory then you might have that.

Answer 3

If you're a programmer, my blogbook on category theory might fit your requirements.