My name is Daniel Yoder. I am very interested in learning about Category Theory -- I have in fact purchased a little booklet by a Benjamin C. Pierce entitled "Basic Category Theory for Computer Scientists" -- as part of a software engineering project I am working on. The project started out as an attempt to address my frustrations with existing commercial object-oriented programming tools, like those for Smalltalk and C++. I had been developing the outlines of a "methodology" for describing logical domain models, which could perhaps be loosely compared to an (explicitly) object-oriented version of the Z language. I say loosely because my formal algebra background is very weak. At any rate, eventually I began translating these abstractions into a C++ library and I wanted to see if there wasn't a more formal basis to proceed from. This idea was particularly compelling because I am dealing with a synthesis of functional programming abstractions, a rich object model (which includes my own conception of a category which appears to be vaguely related to the formal one), and graphs (which I was using for representing the model). Presently, my goals are quite modest but I have found it difficult to develop an approach based on existing research because I lack the appropriate mathematical background. So the question is: are there any attempts to map category theory (or type theory or set theory -- I am not sure where the boundaries are) to applications (versus theory per se), roughly analagous to Z or VDM, that might be comprehensible to somewhat without the formal framework? If not, is there a sequence of study you would recommend for proceeding? I have an undergraduate degree and have done some reading about formal algebra and category theory, but I am not sure of the path from the former to the latter, or if that is, in fact, the appropriate path. Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Thank you for your consideration. - Dan (founder of Tazent Software)