We give a new categorical approach to the Halmos–von Neumann theorem for actions of general topological groups. As a first step, we establish that the categories of topological and measure-preserving irreducible systems with discrete spectrum are equivalent. This allows to prove the Halmos–von Neumann theorem in the framework of topological dynamics. We then use the Pontryagin and Tannaka–Krein duality theories to obtain classification results for topological and then measure-preserving systems with discrete spectrum. As a byproduct, we obtain a complete isomorphism invariant for compactifications of a fixed topological group.