remark about partial understanding

[lambda.git] / offsite_reading.mdwn

diff --git a/offsite_reading.mdwn b/offsite_reading.mdwn
index ee863af..019edd2 100644 (file)
--- a/offsite_reading.mdwn
+++ b/offsite_reading.mdwn
@@ -4,6 +4,17 @@ hope at this point in your education you'll have learned to be a guarded reader
 even of authoritative treatises by eminent authors. So you shouldn't need any
 Wikipedia-specific warnings.
 
+For most readers, many bits of reading we point you to will be hairy in one way
+or another. It may be aimed at audiences with more programming experience; it
+may be aimed at audiences with specific logical background you don't yet have;
+it may be aimed at audiences familiar with technical areas in linguistics you're
+first encountering. Or perhaps several of these at once. We hope you will
+already have mastered the skill of leveraged reading: getting what you can out
+of an article you don't fully understand, so that you can discuss it with the rest of
+the group and hopefully get to a point where you can read it again and
+get more out of out. (Rinse and repeat.)
+
+
 ## General issues about variables and binding in programming languages ##
 
 *      [[!wikipedia Variable (programming)]]
@@ -37,25 +48,19 @@ Wikipedia-specific warnings.
 
 ## Untyped lambda calculus and combinatory logic ##
 
-*      [[!wikipedia Lambda calculus]]
-
+*      [[!wikipedia Lambda calculus]]<p>
 *      [[!wikipedia Haskell Curry]]
 *      [[!wikipedia Moses Schönfinkel]]
-*      [[!wikipedia Alonzo Church]]
-
+*      [[!wikipedia Alonzo Church]]<p>
 *      [[!wikipedia Combinatory logic]]
 *      [[!wikipedia B,C,K,W system]]
-*      [[!wikipedia SKI combinatory calculus]]
-
+*      [[!wikipedia SKI combinatory calculus]]<p>
 *      [[!wikipedia Church-Rosser theorem]]
 *      [[!wikipedia Normalization property]]
-*      [[!wikipedia Turing completeness]]
-
+*      [[!wikipedia Turing completeness]]<p>
 *      [[!wikipedia Church encoding]]
-*      [[!wikipedia Y combinator]]
-
-*      [[!wikipedia Curry-Howard isomorphism]]
-
+*      [[!wikipedia Y combinator]]<p>
+*      [[!wikipedia Curry-Howard isomorphism]]<p>
 *      [[!wikipedia Evaluation strategy]]
 *      [[!wikipedia Eager evaluation]]
 *      [[!wikipedia Lazy evaluation]]
@@ -73,6 +78,8 @@ Wikipedia-specific warnings.
 *      [[!wikipedia Type polymorphism]]
 *      [[!wikipedia System F]]
 
+## Side-effects / mutation ##
+
 *      [[!wikipedia Side effect (computer science)]]
 *      [[!wikipedia Reference (computer science)]]
 *      [[!wikipedia Pointer (computing)]]
@@ -92,4 +99,3 @@ Wikipedia-specific warnings.
 
 *      [[!wikipedia Linear logic]]
 
-