I've heard so much about how good lambda-calculus is. Where

>>62327432
Lambda calculus is a mathematical model of computation. It's equivalent to turing machines. So this isn't realy a language you can write programms in if that what your interested in (although there are probably interpreters that allow you to evaluate some lambda expresions).

I think that LISP was based on lambda calculus (as far as syntex goes at least) so you might be interested in that.

>>62327977
Now can you explain Turing machines please

>>62328234
There also a mathematical model of computation. Just check wikipedia on the subject.

>>62327432
You can code in it directly, but you'd have to define each and every function yourself, including loops and ifs.

>>62327432
You can manipulate lambdas in javascript.

Otherwise just learn lisp.

Lambda calculus is a meme, the Turing Machine is a simpler, yet equally powerful model.
Church was the archetypical MIT nigger, who always has to overcomplicate stuff.

You wouldn't write lambda calculus for the same reason you wouldn't write brainfuck (aka a turing machine)
There's no point. It's one of the simplest complete models of computation, which makes it completely impractical for programming.

If your language has functions you can use it

>>62327432


Lambda calculus is actually a mathematical model based on functions. It's an abstract concepts, just like the turing machine, a finite state machine or a stack based language..

>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chomsky_hierarchy


If you want to learn lambda calculus, do some tutorial and try to understand what fixed point combinators are. Lambda calculus is basically only alpha conversion and beta reduction..

Then if you want to program with it, learn Lisp (with SICP) or Haskell (with "learn you some haskell").


>I've heard so much about how good lambda-calculus is.

"Good" is relative. It's a different paradigm, so if you know how "turing machine programming" works, it might make you a better programmer, because you got a more fundamental understanding of some things.

>>62327432
Just program in fractran, it's easier

>>62327432
OP lambda calculus is deprecated. Someone invented Calculus of construction. You can use it with coq.
https://coq.inria.fr/

>>62328432
except it's the other way around.
it's much easier to formally show correctness or other properties for lambda calculus based languages than it is to show anything for a turing machine.
Languages like Standard ML or Haskell have much cleaner semantics than C.

>>62327432
Lambda calculus is incredibly useless.

you can write a lambda calculus interpreter. Although its cool thing to know and requires a genius mind to wrap you're head around it, It'll be slow and unusable and you're employer probably won't know what it is so you won't be impressing anyone.

>>62327977
No, lisp's syntax is neat because it's actually written in its own Abstract Syntax Tree (google that shit). Basically that means that you're writing lisp the way that the parser reads it.

>>62327432
There are lots of variants of Lambda Calculus and all of them are mathematical models. The untyped lambda calculus is Turing complete (though it does not have numbers and such you can encode them into the theory in a way analogous to how its achieved in axiomatic set theory). The simply typed Lambda Calculus is not Turing Complete. However there are more complicated variants of Lambda Calculus that re-add Turing Completeness in hacky ways.

Here are some introductory lecture notes on Lambda calculus (untyped, simply typed, and a bit more).
https://arxiv.org/abs/0804.3434

Some languages (e.g. Haskell) are based on Turing complete variants of Lambda Calculus but in using them one isn't really programming on Lambda Calculus proper. There exist Lambda Calculus interpreters online that will take Lambda expressions and reduce them but I wouldn't call that programming.

A LOT of programming languages incorrectly use the term "lambda" to refer to anonymous functions. Fuck those languages and the people who tell you they have lambdas.

>>62328234
Read an introductory textbook or some lecture notes on computability theory. I recommend this.
http://math.tut.fi/~ruohonen/FL.pdf
Alternatively there are some books that cover similar ground but use Lambda Calculus instead of Formal Languages (doesn't really matter which way you do it since it's easy to see how they're the same in retrospect). I believe Barendregt wrote a big comprehensive book on it. I wouldn't recommend it as a way to learn Lambda Calculus since it's more focused on developing a model of computation.