or: **What Philosophers and Linguists Can Learn From Theoretical Computer Science But Didn't Know To Ask**
-This course will be co-taught by [Chris Barker](http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cb125/) and [Jim Pryor](http://www.jimpryor.net/). Linguistics calls it "G61.3340-002" and Philosophy calls it "G83.2296-001."
-
+This course is co-taught by [Chris Barker](http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cb125/) and [Jim Pryor](http://www.jimpryor.net/). Linguistics calls it "G61.3340-002" and Philosophy calls it "G83.2296-001."
+The seminar meets on Mondays from 4-6, in
+the Linguistics building at 10 Washington Place, in room 104 (back of the first floor).
+One student session will be held every Wednesday from 3-4 on the
+fourth floor at 10 Washington Place.
## Announcements ##
-The seminar meets on Mondays, starting September 13, from 4-6 in the 2nd floor Philosophy Seminar Room, at 5
-Washington Place. We may be able to shift the time around slightly to suit the
-schedule of participants; but it will remain on Mondays late
-afternoon/evenings.
+* This is the time of the semester when some people start slipping
+ behind with the homework. Don't.
+
+[[Older Announcements]]
+
+##[[Lambda Evaluator]]##
+
+Usable in your browser. It can help you check whether your answer to some of
+the homework questions works correctly.
+
+There is also now a [library](/lambda_library) of lambda-calculus
+arithmetical and list operations, some relatively advanced.
+
+
+## Lecture Notes and Assignments ##
+
+(13 Sept) Lecture notes for [[Week1]]; [[Assignment1]].
+
+> Topics: [[Applications]], including [[Damn]]; Basics of Lambda Calculus; Comparing Different Languages
+
+(20 Sept) Lecture notes for [[Week2]]; [[Assignment2]].
+
+> Topics: Reduction and Convertibility; Combinators; Evaluation Strategies and Normalization; Decidability; [[Lists and Numbers]]
+
+(27 Sept) Lecture notes for [[Week3]]; [[Assignment3]];
+an evaluator with the definitions used for homework 3
+preloaded is available at [[assignment 3 evaluator]].
+
+> Topics: [[Evaluation Order]]; Recursion with Fixed Point Combinators
+
+(4 Oct) Lecture notes for [[Week4]]; [[Assignment4]].
+
+> Topics: More on Fixed Points; Sets; Aborting List Traversals; [[Implementing Trees]]
+
+
+(18 Oct, 25 Oct) Lecture notes for [[Week5]] and [[Week6]]; [[Assignment5]].
+
+> Topics: Types, Polymorphism, Unit and Bottom
+
+(1 Nov) Lecture notes for [[Week7]]; [[Assignment6]].
+
+> Topics: Monads; [[Reader Monad]]; [[Intensionality Monad]]
+
+
+[[Upcoming topics]]
+
+[[Advanced Topics]]
+> Topics: Version 4 lists, Monads in Category Theory
+##Scheme and OCaml##
-## Overview ##
+See [below](#installing) for how to get the programming languages running on your computer.
+
+* Links for help [[learning Scheme]]
+
+* Links for help [[learning OCaml]]
+
+
+##[[Offsite Reading]]##
+
+There's lots of links here already to tutorials and encyclopedia entries about many of the notions we'll be dealing with.
+
+
+
+## Course Overview ##
The goal of this seminar is to introduce concepts and techniques from
theoretical computer science and show how they can provide insight
the Curry-Howard isomorphism(s)
monads in category theory and computation
-->
-
+
## Who Can Participate? ##
The course will not presume previous experience with programming. We
modifying, and writing computer programs.
The course will not presume lots of mathematical or logical background, either.
-However, it will demand a certain amount of comfort working with such material; as a result,
+However, it will demand a certain amount of comfort working with such material; as a result,
it will not be especially well-suited to be a first graduate-level course
in formal semantics or philosophy of language. If you have concerns about your
background, come discuss them with us.
-It hasn't yet been decided whether this course counts for satisfying the logic requirement for
-Philosophy PhD students.
+This class will count as satisfying the logic requirement for Philosophy
+PhD students; however if this would be your first or only serious
+engagement with graduate-level formal work you should consider
+carefully, and must discuss with us, (1) whether you'll be adequately
+prepared for this course, and (2) whether you'd be better served by
+taking a logic course (at a neighboring department, or at NYU next year)
+with a more canonical syllabus.
+
Faculty and students from outside of NYU Linguistics and Philosophy are welcome
to audit, to the extent that this coheres well with the needs of our local
what that means during the course.
* **Scheme** is one of two major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family
-of programming languages. The other dialect is called "CommonLisp." Scheme
+of programming languages. Scheme
is the more clean and minimalistic dialect, and is what's mostly used in
academic circles.
Scheme itself has umpteen different "implementations", which share most of
This is what we recommend you use. (If you're already using or comfortable with
another Scheme implementation, though, there's no compelling reason to switch.)
+ Racket stands to Scheme in something like the relation Firefox stands to HTML.
+
* **Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large
-family of programming languages. The other dialect is called "SML" and has
-several implementations. But Caml has only one active implementation,
+family of programming languages. Caml has only one active implementation,
OCaml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France.
* Those of you with some programming background may have encountered a third
familiar with one of them, it's not difficult to move between it and the
other.
+<a name=installing></a>
[[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]]
-[[Using the programming languages]]
+[[Family tree of functional programming languages]]
+
-
## Recommended Books ##
+It's not necessary to purchase these for the class. But they are good ways to get a more thorough and solid understanding of some of the more basic conceptual tools we'll be using.
+
* *An Introduction to Lambda Calculi for Computer Scientists*, by Chris
Hankin, currently $17 on
-[Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Introduction-Lambda-Calculi-Computer-Scientists/dp/0954300653).
+[Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954300653).
* (Another good book covering the same ground as the Hankin book, but
more thoroughly, and in a more mathematical style, is *Lambda-Calculus and Combinators:
-an Introduction*, by J. Roger Hindley and Jonathan P. Seldin. If you choose to read
+an Introduction*, by J. Roger Hindley and Jonathan P. Seldin, currently $52 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521898854). If you choose to read
both the Hankin book and this book, you'll notice the authors made some different
terminological/notational choices. At first, this makes comprehension slightly slower,
but in the long run it's helpful because it makes the arbitrariness of those choices more salient.)
+* (Another good book, covering some of the same ground as the previous two, but also delving much deeper into typed lambda calculi, is *Types and Programming Languages*, by Benjamin Pierce, currently $61 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262162091). This book has many examples in OCaml.)
* *The Little Schemer, Fourth Edition*, by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias
Felleisen, currently $23 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262560992).
* *The Little MLer*, by Matthias Felleisen and Daniel P. Friedman, currently $27
on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Little-MLer-Matthias-Felleisen/dp/026256114X).
This covers some of the same introductory ground as The Little Schemer, but
-this time in ML. The dialect of ML used is SML, not OCaml, but there are only
-superficial syntactic differences between these languages.
-
-##[[Schedule of Topics]]##
+this time in ML. It uses another dialect of ML (called SML), instead of OCaml, but there are only
+superficial syntactic differences between these languages. [Here's a translation
+manual between them](http://www.mpi-sws.org/~rossberg/sml-vs-ocaml.html).
-##[[Lecture Notes]]##
-
-##[[Offsite Reading]]##
-
-There's lots of links here already to tutorials and encyclopedia entries about many of the notions we'll be dealing with.
----
All wikis are supposed to have a [[SandBox]], so this one does too.
This wiki is powered by [[ikiwiki]].
+
+