X-Git-Url: http://lambda.jimpryor.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=lambda.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=index.mdwn;h=1aefebfd887176bb7908ea922d3050ed405606f9;hp=74aaddf96e792d606cfb48fcac3f65926b386212;hb=8f5ac0c5b7e25c726f3afb65b1fc413af8a4fa52;hpb=d84080ee53c691870c5a8cf462e08bcc5b888104

diff --git a/index.mdwn b/index.mdwn
index 74aaddf9..1aefebfd 100644
--- a/index.mdwn
+++ b/index.mdwn
@@ -20,7 +20,20 @@ All students are invited to help us schedule, and then participate in, a regular
 [[Assignment1]]
 
 
-## Overview ##
+
+##[[Schedule of Topics]]##
+
+[[Using the programming languages]]
+
+##[[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.
+
+
+
+## Course Overview ##
 
 The goal of this seminar is to introduce concepts and techniques from
 theoretical computer science and show how they can provide insight
@@ -122,7 +135,7 @@ and Caml, which are prominent *functional programming languages*. We'll explain
 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 "Common Lisp." 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
@@ -135,8 +148,7 @@ 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
@@ -150,12 +162,13 @@ other.
 
 [[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).
@@ -183,17 +196,10 @@ on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Seasoned-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/02625610
 *	*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
+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).
 
-##[[Schedule of Topics]]##
-
-##[[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.
 
 
 ----