[Lambda]-calculus and combinators

What Hacker News says

1. denotationalFeb 2024
   I read Lambda-Calculus and Combinators: An Introduction by J Roger Hindley as an undergraduate and found it was very accessible.
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2. burakemirDec 2020
   The article is a deep dive into Moses Schönfinkel's life, and mentions how his work is picked up by Haskell Curry.

   It is very long, contains surprisingly few of the characteristic Wolfram promotion usually found in Wolfram texts, but besides a detailed biography and pictures of historic documents, there are a few gems (people who researched "algebra of logic" before most others) for the persistent reader.

   > And maybe if the operation we now call currying needs a symbol we should be using the “sha” character Ш from the beginning of Schönfinkel’s name to remind us of a person about whom we know so little, but who planted a seed that gave us so much.

   That's a good suggestion!

   For folks who are interested in combinators but didn't get what they want from the text: the approachable reference on combinators is Hindley and Sheldon's "Lambda-Calculus and Combinators: an introduction"

   ... and of course, there is "To mock a mockingbird" by Raymond Smullyan, which introduces the topic through puzzles.

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3. poletopoleDec 2020
   The only book I found helpful in learning functional programming was Lambda calculus and combinators by Hindley. Although you can find it online for free it’s worth buying. What I discovered was that books on Haskell simply weren’t enough to understand the language, you really do need to understand lambda calculus first.
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4. thamerOct 2020
   I found the book "An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists"[1] to be a good intro to these concepts. For those who want to go further, books by Henk Barendregt[2] are widely considered to be a reference to lambda-calculus and combinators.

   Fresh out of college I was really into lambda calculus and combinators, and wrote a pretty similar blog post to this article, maybe just a bit simpler: https://log.kv.io/post/2008/03/02/ski-calculus-in-haskell-sh...

   [1] https://www.amazon.com/dp/0954300653

   [2] "The Lambda Calculus — Its Syntax and Semantics" and "Lambda Calculus with Types"

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5. poletopoleOct 2020
   I’m learning Haskell right now and had the same question until I found Hindley’s Lambda-Calculus and Combinators: an Introduction book. Many here are recommending Julia but I’ve used Julia enough now to conclude that it isn’t as mature as Haskell and can be frustrating at times. Haskell, when it’s foundations and history are well understood not only challenges how you think about programming but also of mathematics.
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6. eindiranMay 2019
   Henk Barendregt, the author of this paper, has an excellent reference book on the untyped lambda calculus called "The Lambda Calculus: Its Syntax and Semantics". I believe he also wrote a book on the typed lambda calculus but I have never read it. This is a good reference text, but in my opinion is not a good introductory text.

   For a good introduction, I would recommend J. Roger Hindley's introduction to the lambda calculus and combinatory logic entitled "Lambda-Calculus and Combinators: An Introduction". It includes some interesting info on SKI combinator calculus in addition to the lambda calculus.

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