Opinion on FP book - Functional

wooks wrote:
> Is there anybody familiar with An Introduction to FP through Lambda
> Calculus - Greg Michaelson out there and willing to give their view on
> this book.

It's the book that gave my my first taste of what lambda calculus was
independent of functional programming, but I remember getting a bit lost
the first time. I'm leafing through it now and I don't see anything too
intimidating, so I must have absorbed some of it. I don't think this is
the right way to learn SML or LISP (which it covers), and I'm not sure
it's the right way to learn lambda calculus for that matter, but I think
this book (along with "The Anatomy of Programming Languages" Fischer,
Grodzinsky, which I really liked) might have helped me get my head
around the idea that programming languages (the good ones anyway) are
manifestations of language-independent models of computation, if that
makes any sense...

-thant

On Nov 7, 9:47 pm, Thant Tessman <thant.tess...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't think this is
> the right way to learn SML or LISP (which it covers), and I'm not sure
> it's the right way to learn lambda calculus for that matter, but I think
> this book (along with "The Anatomy of Programming Languages" Fischer,
> Grodzinsky, which I really liked) might have helped me get my head
> around the idea that programming languages (the good ones anyway) are
> manifestations of language-independent models of computation, if that
> makes any sense...
>

Well I've read just over half the book now, can't offer an opinion on
it's treatment of SML or LISP since I haven't got to those bits, but
it contains the first treatment of lambda calculus that I've been able
to understand. I think alot of that is due to the fact that it
contains solutions to ALL of the problems. If there is a better
motivation and exposition for the Y combinator in print (and I've
tried a few) I'd like to see it.

Even though the approach starts to get a bit tedious after a while I
have to say that it's pedagogy is very effective and has deepened my
understanding of what goes on in a FP language.