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To Dissect a Mockingbird: A Graphical Notation for the Lambda Calculus
- zitterbewegung 17y agoLooks like an interesting paper. Its sort of weird though when you know someone that is mentioned in the paper (Louis Kauffman). Although I'm assuming its the same person. Professor Kauffman likes diagram based arguments so it seems like it would be the same person.
- aquarin 17y agoOld, but gold.
- scotty79 17y agoWhat's the point of writing algorithm as lambda calculus? Can you do some automatic optimization on algorithm when it is described as this "birds" or check it for consistency in a way that is not obvious when we describe as series of commands to be executed?
- ambulatorybird 17y agoI know very little about the topic, but I believe that various transformations and simplifications in lambda calculus are relevant when it comes to compiling functional programs.
- iskander 17y agoNot just functional programs. You can transform any old C program into specific subsets of lambda calculus (administrative normal form or continuation passing style) and do all your optimizations there.
- iskander 17y agoMany common compiler optimizations are subsumed by ordinary reduction rules for lambda calculus. See: [Shrinking reductions in SML. NET](http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/akenn/sml/ShrinkingReductionsInSMLNet.pdf http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/people/akenn/sml/Shri...). That said, you can always transform an imperative program into lambda calculus (sequential imperative IL -> SSA -> Administrative Normal Form) and vice versa (arbitrary lambda calculus -> closure conversion -> Administrative Normal Form -> sequential imperative IL).