Derived categories for the working mathematician
arXiv:math/0001045
Abstract
It is becoming increasingly difficult for geometers and even physicists to avoid papers containing phrases like `triangulated category', not to mention derived functors. I will give some motivation for such things from algebraic geometry, and show how the concepts are already familiar from topology. This gives a natural and simple way to look at cohomology and other scary concepts in homological algebra like Ext, Tor, hypercohomology and spectral sequences.
Silly mistake pointed out by Tony Scholl corrected