What are some resources for learning Lambda Calculus?

Question

So the interesting Wikipedia publication Lambda Calculus was interesting, but I finished it. I want to dive a little deeper and better understand Lambda Calculus.

Can anyone recommend what they consider to be the best book or tutorial for Lambda Calculus?

Answer 1

If you have finished writing to Wikipedia, follow the link Structure and interpretation of computer programs , complete tasks or read a book .

alt text http://mitpress.mit.edu/images/products/books/0262011530-medium.jpg

Answer 2

Well, always an introduction to the calculus of lambda . I tried to read it several times, but always stuck. I feel that I already know most of this material and it will probably be easier to understand if it were presented in terms of Lisp / Scheme, and not mathematics. Perhaps you are more lucky :)

Answer 3

I found Chris Hankin's Introduction to Lambda Calculators for Computer Scientists very well, but I really used it for only one class - I did not use it in the real world :)

alt text http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/4165AQ4AF8L._SL500_AA240_.jpg

Answer 4

I think that the reference to the topic of lambda calculus itself is still the book of Barendgret .

alt text http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41BRXJ7E7GL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

In addition, it largely depends on what “part” of lambda calculus you are interested in: typing? evidence-based theory? long-term transcription? functional programming?

Each of them is a field in itself, and I do not know a single book that would cover all this.

Answer 5

Try to write an interpreter of lambda calculus, ideally, in a functional language, using the language syntax, and not through a parser. This is surprisingly easy and a good way to improve your perception.

Answer 6

I recently bought a book from Amazon called "Introduction to Functional Programming through Lambda Calculus" by Greg Michaelson. It is rather an introduction to functional programming, as well as an introduction to lambda calculus. The first impression is very good. Independent and easy to read book. Here , you can download the free version without an index in PostScript.

Answer 7

The book, which really made me begin to use and understand lambda calculus, was Blackburn and Bos's Introduction and Conclusion for Natural Language. This is a book about natural language processing using Prolog. Another book you may consider is Allen's Natural Language Proficiency. Finally, if you like lambda calculus, you'll probably also like combinatorial logic, since combinators can be defined as single-character lambda expressions. For this, I highly recommend Smullian's riddle book, Mocking a Mockingbird. Towards the end, he uses combinators to create a rudimentary programming language.

Answer 8

Here is a good explanation (using the Schema): http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs173/2002/Lectures/2002-10-28-lc.pdf

And here is a great bit (from my blog) that reduces recursive factorial to pure lambdas: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/ashleyf/archive/2008/12/03/the-lambda-calculus.aspx

Good luck