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Lambda-calculus in lambdatalk
The lambda-calculus is amazing and rather terce. I read a lot of things here and there, written by smart people, but I am not sure that I understand what is to be understood. So, using a small lispy dialect I am working on, lambdatalk, I decided to translate some primitive objects of lambda-calculus - Church numbers, a set of operators (succ, add, mul, power), pairs, computing factorial - and I wrote this page [lambda_calculus](http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=lambda_calculus). It's a work in progress. I feel I understand a little more the lambda-calculus :)
I wonder what smart people like you could think of this work. Your opinion is welcome. Thanks in advance.
- bbcbasic 11y agoNice summary. I like it. I will bookmark it for future reference as it is more concise than the Wikipedia article that I usually refer to. A quick mention about closures would be a good idea. I often see the Lambda Calculus introduced with "oh look only 3 constructs and you can do all this stuff..." However closures are also necessary because if the inner `x` in \x.(\x.x) doesn't come from the correct abstraction the whole thing doesn't work.
- martyalain 11y agoThank you :) About closures it can be interesting to know that in lambdatalk lambdas don't create closures, there is not any local environment. Things work because lambdas memorize partial calls and are de facto curried and so closures are not necessary. More explanations in this page: http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=lambdatalk%20three#17 http://epsilonwiki.free.fr/lambdaway/?view=lambdatalk%20thre... . Thanks again