OP here. Since this is a video, I'll post the abstract, etc.:
by Ron Garret
The lambda calculus is widely known but also widely misunderstood. It it considered by most coders to be nothing more than a theoretical curiosity and not really useful for anything by itself. In this talk, I show how to write a factorial function in pure lambda calculus, i.e. using nothing but lambdas, in a way that is actually efficient enough to compute the factorial of ten in a few seconds. Seeing how this is done can provide deep insights into functional programming, compilation, and other useful programming techniques like CPS-conversion.
Bay Area Lisp and Scheme Meetup,
http://balisp.org/ ,
Sat 17 Oct 2015,
Hacker Dojo,
Mountain View, CA
1 comment
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 17.2 ms ] threadby Ron Garret
The lambda calculus is widely known but also widely misunderstood. It it considered by most coders to be nothing more than a theoretical curiosity and not really useful for anything by itself. In this talk, I show how to write a factorial function in pure lambda calculus, i.e. using nothing but lambdas, in a way that is actually efficient enough to compute the factorial of ten in a few seconds. Seeing how this is done can provide deep insights into functional programming, compilation, and other useful programming techniques like CPS-conversion.
Bay Area Lisp and Scheme Meetup, http://balisp.org/ , Sat 17 Oct 2015, Hacker Dojo, Mountain View, CA