The seminar meets in spring 2015 on Thursdays from 4 until a bit before 7 (with a short break in the middle), in
the Linguistics building at 10 Washington Place, in room 103 (front of the first floor).
-<!--
-One student session will be held every Wednesday from XX-YY at WHERE.
--->
+One student session to discuss homeworks will be held every Wednesday from 5-6, in Linguistics room 104 (back of the first floor).
+
+## [[Index of Main Content|content]] (lecture notes and more) ##
-## [[Index of Content (lecture notes and more)|content]] ##
+## [[Offsite Readings|readings]] ##
## Announcements ##
* As we mentioned in class, if you're following the course and would like to be emailed occasionally, send an email to <mailto:jim.pryor@nyu.edu>, saying "lambda" in the subject line. Most often, we will just post announcements to this website, rather than emailing you. But occasionally an email might be more appropriate.
+<!--
* As we mentioned in class, we're also going to schedule a session to discuss the weekly homeworks. If you'd like to participate in this, please complete [this Doodle poll](http://doodle.com/7xrf4w8xq4i9e5za). It asks when you are available on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
+-->
-<!--
-One student session will be held every Wednesday from XX-YY at WHERE.
+* The student session has been scheduled for Wednesdays from 5-6, in Linguistics room 104 (back of the first floor).
-For those who'd like to attend the section but can't make the
-Wednesday time: If you're one of the students who
-wants to meet for Q&A at some other time in the week, let us know.
+ Those of you interested in additional Q&A but who can't make that time, let us know.
-You should see the student sessions as opportunities to clear up lingering
+ You should see these student sessions as opportunities to clear up lingering
issues from material we've discussed, and help get a better footing for what
-we'll be doing the next week. It would be smart to make a serious start on that
-week's homework, for instance, before the session.
--->
+we'll be doing the next week. It's expected you'll have made at least a serious start on that
+week's homework (due the following day) before the session.
-* Here is information about [[How to get the programming languages running on your computer|installing]].
+* Here is information about [[How to get the programming languages running on your computer|installing]]. If those instructions seem overwhelming, note that it should be possible to do a lot of this course using only demonstration versions of these languages [[that run in your web browser|browser]].
* Henceforth, unless we say otherwise, every homework will be "due" by
Wednesday morning after the Thursday seminar in which we refer to it.
[[Homework|exercises/assignment1]];
[[Advanced notes|topics/week1 advanced notes]]
+(**Intermezzo**)
+> The [[differences between our made-up language and Scheme, OCaml, and Haskell|rosetta]];
+Help on [[learning Scheme]], [[OCaml|learning OCaml]], and [[Haskell|learning Haskell]];
+[[What do words like "interpreter" and "compiler" mean?|ecosystem]]
<!--
[[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.
understanding of them to recognize them in use, use them yourself at least
in simple ways, and to be able to read more about them when appropriate.
+"Computer Science is no more about computers than astronomy is about telescopes." -- [E. W. Dijkstra](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edsger_W._Dijkstra) <small>(or Hal Abelson, or Michael Fellows; the quote's <a href="https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Computer_science">origins are murky</a>)</small>
+
+
[[More about the topics and larger themes of the course|overview]]
[Lisp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29),
[Scheme](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_%28programming_language%29),
[Racket](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28programming_language%29), and
-[Chicken](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHICKEN_%28Scheme_implementation%29).)
- <!-- Help on Learning Scheme -->
+[Chicken](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHICKEN_%28Scheme_implementation%29).)
+ (Help on [[Learning Scheme]])
* **Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large
family of programming languages. Caml has only one active "implementation",
(Wikipedia on
[ML](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ML_%28programming_language%29),
[Caml](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caml), and
-[OCaml](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCaml).)
- <!-- Help on Learning OCaml -->
+[OCaml](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OCaml).)
+ (Help on [[Learning OCaml]])
* **Haskell** is also used a
(Wikipedia on
[Haskell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_%28programming_language%29) and
-[GHC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Haskell_Compiler).)
- <!-- Help on Learning Haskell -->
+[GHC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glasgow_Haskell_Compiler).)
+ (Help on [[Learning Haskell]])
+<!--
+[Helium](https://www.haskell.org/pipermail/haskell/2003-January/011071.html) is a simplified Haskell for teaching (no typeclasses)
+-->
working through this book instead of The Little Schemer. For the rest of you,
or those of you who *want* practice with Scheme, go with The Little Schemer.
-* *The Haskell Road to Logic, Maths and Programming*, by Kees Doets and Jan van Eijck, currently XX on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954300696) is a textbook teaching the parts of math and logic we cover in the first few weeks of Logic for Philosophers. (Notions like validity, proof theory for predicate logic, sets, sequences, relations, functions, inductive proofs and recursive definitions, and so on.) The math here should be accessible and familiar to all of you. What is novel about this book is that it integrates the exposition of these notions with a training in (part of) Haskell. It only covers the rudiments of Haskell's type system, and doesn't cover monads; but if you wanted to review this material and become comfortable with core pieces of Haskell in the process, this could be a good read.
+* *The Haskell Road to Logic, Math and Programming*, by Kees Doets and Jan van Eijck, currently $22 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0954300696) is a textbook teaching the parts of math and logic we cover in the first few weeks of Logic for Philosophers. (Notions like validity, proof theory for predicate logic, sets, sequences, relations, functions, inductive proofs and recursive definitions, and so on.) The math here should be accessible and familiar to all of you. What is novel about this book is that it integrates the exposition of these notions with a training in (part of) Haskell. It only covers the rudiments of Haskell's type system, and doesn't cover monads; but if you wanted to review this material and become comfortable with core pieces of Haskell in the process, this could be a good read.
+(The book also seems to be available online [here](http://fldit-www.cs.uni-dortmund.de/~peter/PS07/HR.pdf).)
The rest of these are a bit more advanced, and are also looser suggestions:
-* *Computation Semantics with Functional Programming*, by Jan van Eijck and Christina Unger, currently XX on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Computational-Semantics-Functional-Programming-Eijck/dp/0521757606). We own this but haven't read it yet. It *looks* like it's doing the same kind of thing this seminar aims to do: exploring how natural language meanings can be understood to be "computed". The text uses Haskell, and is aimed at linguists and philosophers as well as computer scientists. Definitely worth a look.
+* *Computational Semantics with Functional Programming*, by Jan van Eijck and Christina Unger, currently $42 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0521757606). We own this but haven't read it yet. It *looks* like it's doing the same kind of thing this seminar aims to do: exploring how natural language meanings can be understood to be "computed". The text uses Haskell, and is aimed at linguists and philosophers as well as computer scientists. Definitely worth a look.
<!--
It deals with both denotational meaning (where meaning
comes from knowing the conditions of truth in situations), and
* Another good book, covering a bit of the same ground as the Hankin and the Hindley & Seldin, but focusing especially on typed lambda calculi, is *Types and Programming Languages*, by Benjamin Pierce, currently $77 hardback / $68 kindle on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262162091). This book has many examples in OCaml. It seems to be the standard textbook for CS students learning type theory.
-* The next two books focus on the formal semantics of typed programming languages, both in the "denotational" form that most closely corresponds to what we mean by semantics, and in the "operational" form very often used in CS. These are: **The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages**, by Glynn Winskel, currently XX on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262731037), and **Semantics of Programming Languages**, by Carl Gunter, currently XX on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/9780262570954).
+* The next two books focus on the formal semantics of typed programming languages, both in the "denotational" form that most closely corresponds to what we mean by semantics, and in the "operational" form very often used in CS. These are: *The Formal Semantics of Programming Languages*, by Glynn Winskel, currently $38 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262731037), and *Semantics of Programming Languages*, by Carl Gunter, currently $41 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0262071436).
----