I'm a university student, and we're currently studying Lambda Calculus. However, I still have a hard time understanding exactly why this is useful for me. I realize if you do loads of functional programming it might be useful, however I reckon that it's not really needed for learning functional programming, what do you think?
Secondly, is there any use for Lambda Calculus within the realm of Computer Science but outside of functional programming languages?
Asked By : AzaraT
Answered By : Dave Clarke
The lambda calculus is fundamental in logic, category theory, type theory, formal verification, ... Basically, anything to do with programming language semantics and formal logic. It is such a fundamental formalism that people working in these fields do not even question the benefit of it.
I think that it is extremely useful for understanding functional programming because it gives you the essence of functional programming. Functions, application, substitution. Based on this you can build your skills in reasoning about functional programs and transformations of them. Higher-order functions are a breeze.
Sure you could learn functional programming without the lambda calculus, but you would never truly understand functional programming without it.
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Question Source : http://cs.stackexchange.com/questions/6791
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