Alligator Eggs and Lambda Calculus (2007)
5 comments
·January 18, 2025bitwize
I always thought this was up there with "monads are like burritos" in terms of how it makes things more complicated instead of simplifying them. Maybe that's just my old ass, and kids would appreciate it more. When I was a kid one of my teachers referred to the > and < symbols as "alligator mouths" and said "Just remember the alligator mouth eats the bigger number." Helped me keep those symbols straight for years.
gs17
Yeah, I "get" it, but I can only think that as a kid I would have been too upset about all the senseless alligator deaths to internalize the patterns. I guess if they're not old enough to know algebra, (λx.x λy.y)(λz.z) might be more scary than a reptilian predator.
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Some past discussions. I thought it had been discussed more but maybe it turned up in other discussions rather than as a submission of its own.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8906167 - Jan 18, 2015 (24 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4586692 - Sept 28, 2012 (24 comments)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600736 - May 9, 2009 (9 comments)