Explaining Lambda Calculus through Plain JavaScript
summary
Claims that Lambda Calculus maps directly into JavaScript implementations of lambda terms, shows concrete encodings: Church booleans, Church numerals, pairs, lists, option type, map/flatMap and logical ops, plus arithmetic and zero/even tests. Demonstrates recursion via a Y combinator for recursion (notes JS needs a lazy/wrapped form), builds factorial that computes up to 20 in the demo, and explains combinators S, K, I and single-base encodings.
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chapters (13)
- 0:00Introduction and background
- 4:41Lambda calculus origins
- 6:32Lambda calculus basics
- 12:21Lambda calculus refactorings
- 17:00Logic in Lambda calculus
- 22:30Numbers in Lambda calculus
- 28:59Data structures in Lambda
- 38:01Lists and operations
- 41:35Functional libraries in JavaScript
- 42:19Combinators in Lambda
- 48:09Loops and recursion
- 51:05Demo factorial function
- 52:12Conclusion and references
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