X-Git-Url: http://lambda.jimpryor.net/git/gitweb.cgi?p=lambda.git;a=blobdiff_plain;f=index.mdwn;h=ff8b324b1b759d87798273386397c0ea7ada1b30;hp=53c7b588622769446f123579538baae5a9c4d5a0;hb=542fa92b325edcec8613e72b9e6856cda39f3716;hpb=3c3f15e8c5589af6e6ed81c2547762e1d879613c

diff --git a/index.mdwn b/index.mdwn
index 53c7b588..ff8b324b 100644
--- a/index.mdwn
+++ b/index.mdwn
@@ -1,11 +1,17 @@
-Philosophy COURSENUMBER and Linguistics COURSENUMBER
-SHORT COURSE TITLE?
+# Seminar in Semantics / Philosophy of Language #
 
 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."
+
+
 ## Announcements ##
 
-The course meets starting on XXX, at ZZZ, in room YYY.
+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.
+
 
 
 ## Overview ##
@@ -97,15 +103,65 @@ to audit, to the extent that this coheres well with the needs of our local
 students.
 
 
-## Recommended Readings and Software ##
+## 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.
+
+*	**Scheme** is one of two major dialects of *Lisp*, which is a large family
+of programming languages. The other dialect is called "CommonLisp." 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
+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.)
+
+*	**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,
+OCaml, developed by the INRIA academic group in France.
+
+*	Those of your with some programming background may have encountered a third
+prominent functional programming language, **Haskell**. This is also used a
+lot in the academic contexts we'll be working through. Its surface syntax
+differs from OCaml, and there are various important things one can do in
+each of Haskell and Ocaml that one can't (or can't as easily) do in the
+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.
+
+[[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]]
+	
+## Recommended Readings ##
+
+*	*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).
+
+*   *The Little Schemer, Fourth Edition*, by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias
+Felleisen, currently $23 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262560992).
+This is a classic text introducing the gentle art of programming, using the
+functional programming language Scheme. Many people love this book, but it has
+an unusual dialog format that is not to everybody's taste. **Of particular
+interest for this course** is the explanation of the Y combinator, available as
+a free sample chapter [at the MIT Press web page for the
+book](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/).
+
+*	*The Seasoned Schemer*, also by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, currently $28
+on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/Seasoned-Schemer-Daniel-P-Friedman/dp/026256100X)
+
+*	*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.
 
-   *The Little Schemer, Fourth Edition*, by Daniel P. Friedman and Matthias Felleisen, currently $23 on [Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0262560992/ref=pd_sim_books/103-5471398-9229403#reader_0262560992).
-This is a classic text introducing the gentle art of programming, using the functional programming language Scheme.
-Many people love this book, but it has an unusual dialog format that is not to everybody's taste.
-**Of particular interest for this course** is the explanation of the Y combinator, available as a free sample chapter 
-[at the MIT Press web page for the book](http://www.ccs.neu.edu/home/matthias/BTLS/).
 
-	[[How to get the programming languages running on your computer]]
 
 ## Schedule of Topics ##