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@@ -2,9 +2,9 @@
 
 or: **What Philosophers and Linguists Can Learn From Theoretical Computer Science But Didn't Know To Ask**
 
-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" and Philosophy calls it "G83.2296"
-The seminar meets in spring 2015 on Thursdays from 4-7, in 
-the Linguistics building at 10 Washington Place, in room 104 (back of the first floor).
+This course is co-taught by [Chris Barker](http://homepages.nyu.edu/~cb125/) and [Jim Pryor](http://www.jimpryor.net/). Linguistics calls it "LING-GA 3340" and Philosophy calls it "PHIL-GA 2296".
+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 3-4 on the
@@ -18,12 +18,22 @@ This wiki will be undergoing lots of changes throughout the semester, and partic
 we taught this course, and iron out various technical wrinkles. Please be patient.
 
 If you've eager to learn, though, you don't have to wait on us to be ready to serve you. You can go look at the [archived first version](http://lambda1.jimpryor.net) of this course. Just keep in mind that
-the text and links there haven't been updated.
+the text and links there haven't been updated. And/or you can get started on installing the software and ordering some of the books.
+
+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.
+
+Here is information about [[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]].
+
+Here are Lecture notes for [[Week1]]; [[Assignment1]].
+
+>	Topics: Basics of Functional Programming
 
 
 ## Course Overview ##
 
-The goal of this seminar is to introduce concepts and techniques from
+The overarching goal of this seminar is to introduce concepts and techniques from
 theoretical computer science and show how they can provide insight
 into established philosophical and linguistic problems.
 
@@ -37,7 +47,7 @@ Philosphers and linguists tend to reuse the same familiar tools in
 ever more (sometime spectacularly) creative ways.  But when your only
 hammer is classical logic, every problem looks like modus ponens.  In
 contrast, computer scientists have invested considerable ingenuity in
-studying tool design, and have made remarkable progress.
+studying the design of their conceptual tools (among other things), and they've made much progress that we can benefit from.
 
 "Why shouldn't I reinvent some idea X for myself? It's intellectually
 rewarding!" Yes it is, but it also takes time you might have better
@@ -53,44 +63,21 @@ connection to existing literature and neighboring issues may go
 unnoticed. For all these reasons you're better off understanding the
 state of the art.
 
-The theoretical tools we'll be introducing aren't very familiar to
+The theoretical tools we'll be introducing aren't part of the diet of most
 everyday programmers, but they are prominent in academic computer science,
 especially in the fields of functional programming and type theory.
 
 Of necessity, this course will lay a lot of logical groundwork. But throughout
 we'll be aiming to mix that groundwork with real cases
-in our home subjects where these tools play central roles.
+in our home subjects where these tools can (or already do, covertly) play central roles.
 
 Our aim for the
 course is to enable you to make these tools your own; to have enough
 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.
 
-<!--
-Once we get up and running, the central focii of the course will be
-**continuations**, **types**, and **monads**. One of the on-going themes will
-concern evaluation order and issues about how computations (inferences,
-derivations) unfold in (for instance) time.  The key analytic technique is to
-form a static, order-independent model of a dynamic process. We'll be
-discussing this in much more detail as the course proceeds.
-
-The logical systems we'll be looking at include:
-
-*	the pure/untyped lambda calculus
-*	combinatorial logic
-*	the simply-typed lambda calculus
-*	polymorphic types with System F
-*	some discussion of dependent types
-*	if time permits, "indeterministic" or "preemptively parallel" computation and linear logic
-
-
-Other keywords:
-	recursion using the Y-combinator
-	evaluation-order stratgies
-	normalizing properties
-	the Curry-Howard isomorphism(s)
-	monads in category theory and computation
--->
+[[More about the topics and larger themes of the course]]
+
 
 ## Who Can Participate? ##
 
@@ -105,15 +92,14 @@ 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.
 
-<!--
-This class will count as satisfying the logic requirement for Philosophy
-PhD students; however if this would be your first or only serious
+If you hope to have the class satisfy the logic requirement for Philosophy PhD students, this needs to be discussed with us and approved in advance. 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)
+taking a logic course
 with a more canonical syllabus.
--->
+This term you could take PHIL-GA 1003, [Logic for Philosophers](http://jdh.hamkins.org), offered by Joel Hamkins on Wednesdays 12-2.
 
 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
@@ -123,8 +109,27 @@ students.
 ## Recommended Software ##
 
 During the course, we'll be encouraging you to try out various things in Scheme
-and Caml, which are prominent *functional programming languages*. We'll explain
-what that means during the course.
+and OCaml. Occasionally we will also make remarks about Haskell. All three of these
+are prominent *functional programming languages*. The term "functional" here means they have
+a special concern with functions, not just that they aren't broken. But what precisely is
+meant by "functional" is somewhat fuzzy and even its various precisifications take some
+time to explain. We'll get clearer on this during the course. Another term used roughly the same as "functional"
+is "declarative." At a first pass, "functional" or "declarative" programming is primarily focused on complex
+expressions that get computationally evaluated to some (usually simpler) result. In class I gave the examples
+of `1+2` (which gets evaluated in arithmetic to 3), `1+2 < 5` (which gets evaluated in arithmetic to 'true), and `1`
+(which gets evaluated in arithmetic to 1). Also Google search strings, which get evaluated by Google servers to a
+list of links.
+
+The dominant contrasting class of programming languages (the great majority of what's used
+in industry) are called "imperatival" languages, meaning they have more to do with following a sequence of commands (what we
+called in class "side-effects", though sometimes what they're *alongside* is not that interesting, and all the focus is instead
+on the effect). Programming languages like C and Python and JavaScript and so on are all of this sort.
+
+In fact, nothing that gets marketed as a "programming language" is really completely 100% functional/declarative, and even the
+imperatival languages will have purely functional fragments (they evaluate `1+2` to 3, also). So these labels are really
+more about *styles* or *idioms* of programming, and languages like Scheme and OCaml and especially Haskell get called "functional languages" because
+of the extent to which they emphasize, and are designed around those idioms. Even languages like Python and JavaScript are sometimes
+described as "more functional" than some other languages. The language C is about as non-functional as you can get.
 
 *	**Scheme** is one of two major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family
 of programming languages. Scheme
@@ -132,16 +137,26 @@ 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
 their fundamentals, but have slightly different extensions and interact with
-the operating system differently. One major implementation used to be called
-PLT Scheme, and has just in the past few weeks changed their name to Racket.
-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.)
+the operating system differently. One major implementation is called Racket,
+and that 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.
 
+	(Wikipedia on [Lisp](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisp_%28programming_language%29),
+[Scheme](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scheme_%28programming_language%29),
+and [Racket](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racket_%28programming_language%29).)
+
 *	**Caml** is one of two major dialects of *ML*, which is another large
-family of programming languages. Caml has only one active implementation,
-OCaml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France.
+family of programming languages. Caml has only one active "implementation",
+OCaml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France. Sometimes we may refer to Caml or ML
+more generally; but you can assume that what we're talking about always works more
+specifically in OCaml.
+
+	(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).)
+
 
 *	Those of you with some programming background may have encountered a third
 prominent functional programming language, **Haskell**. This is also used a
@@ -152,20 +167,12 @@ other. But these languages also have a lot in common, and if you're
 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]]
-
-[[Family tree of functional programming languages]]
-
-[[Translating between OCaml Scheme and Haskell]]
+	(Wikipedia on [Haskell](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haskell_%28programming_language%29).)
 
-## What is Functional Programming? ##
 
-Here's a [survey conducted at Microsoft](http://research.microsoft.com/apps/pubs/default.aspx?id=141506) asking programmers what they understand "functional programming" to be. Don't take their responses to be authoritative... this is a just a "man in the street" (seat?) poll.
+<a name=installing></a>
+[[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]]
 
-Read more about the [uptake of Haskell](http://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2010/12/haskell-researchers-announce-discovery.html) among programmers in the street.
--->
 
 ## Recommended Books ##
 
@@ -210,5 +217,3 @@ but in the long run it's helpful because it makes the arbitrariness of those cho
 All wikis are supposed to have a [[SandBox]], so this one does too.
 
 This wiki is powered by [[ikiwiki]].
-
-