The lambda calculus
by H. P. Barendregt · first published 1981
8mentions
3recommended by
5HN commenters
2011–2018first – last mentioned
60% recommend40% neutral
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…order to prepare for a standardized test I had to take. After a few chapters I realized this was no ordinary Calculus book." Anyway, there is a reprint available now for $25 http://www.amazon.com/The-Lambda-Calculus-Syntax-Semantics/d...
on “Books and papers every graduate student should read” ↗Nice article (the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has many more, btw.), but I like the "Introduction to Lambda Calculus" by Henk Barendregt (one of the people working in Lambda calculus, see for instance the citation to his book "The Lambda Calculus: Its syntax and semantics." in the references), which has the added benefit…
on “The Lambda Calculus” ↗Here's a short-list: - Calculating space by Konrad Zuse (See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18325689) - The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzlod - Introduction to Lambda Calculus by H. Barendregt (do the exercises/proofs) - Propositions as Types by Philip Wadler - Part III. of Languages and Machines by Thomas Sudkamp
on “Ask HN: Good books on computation” ↗While this is a nice article on compiling to lambda calculus, the uninitiated might find Barendregt's "Introduction to Lambda Calculus" (ftp://ftp.cs.ru.nl/pub/CompMath.Found/lambda.pdf) an invaluable resource. (IMHO, it's the best work for groking lambda calculus,…
on “Compiling to lambda-calculus: Turtles all the way down ” ↗…and Data Structures. * In Compilers: - Wirth: Compiler Construction. - Grune, Bal, Jacobs, Cerial: Modern Compiler Design. - Muchnick: Advanced Compiler Design and Implementation. * In Lambda calculus: - Barendregt: Introduction to Lambda Calculus. * In theoretical computer science: - Kozen: Automata and Computability. - Davis: Computability and Unsolvability. * In concepts of PLs:…
on “Technical Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice)” ↗…interesting papers. On that note it's a bit strange not to see a few books on semantics, such as Transitions and Trees or Semantics Engineering with PLT Redex, listed among books like TAPL and Barendregt's Lambda Calculus. Especially now that DSL design is something many programmers are dabbling in, it makes sense to gain some background on operational semantics. I'd recommend either of these books to anyone working on…
on “Functional programming books review” ↗Your intuition that Clojure's macro system is unhygienic are correct. Hygiene in this context was coined by Henk Barendregt in the context of the lambda calculus: > For reasons of hygiene, it will always be assumed that the bound variables that occur in a certain expression are different from the free ones. [0] This may seem nonsensical at first, but consider…
on “FemtoEmacs: Tiny Emacs clone with configuration in FemtoLisp” ↗…to get the material into the hands of as many as it may be useful to as soon as possible. I would argue that the book is at least as useful as Categories for the Working Mathematician or Barendregt's Lambda Calculus are likely to be for your typical software engineer interested in functional programming. To be clear, someone interested only in learning how to program in functional languages is probably not going…
on “Functional programming books review” ↗