
 The Y Combinator - nickb
http://mvanier.livejournal.com/2700.html
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sant0sk1
Add your own abstraction layer:

"The Y combinator allows us to define [1] in computer languages that do not
have built-in support for [2], but that do support first-class [3]."

An example:

[1] startups

[2] operating costs

[3] solutions

Your turn!

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davidmathers
Richard Gabriel also tried to explain Y:

<http://www.dreamsongs.com/NewFiles/WhyOfY.pdf>

~~~
davidmathers
P.S. This is the best explanation of combinators I've seen on the web (and
includes Y of course):

<http://users.bigpond.net.au/d.keenan/Lambda/index.htm>

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klocksib
Pretty good write up. The only part I did not care for was the pompous:
"[...]I think the reason is that he wanted to attract the kind of programmers
who were smart enough to have heard about the Y combinator"... The author has
confused ignorance with intelligence.

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raffi
Here is a derivation of the Y Combinator in Perl:

<http://use.perl.org/~Aristotle/journal/30896>

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jrockway
Ah, a new internet meme. A few years ago, it was Haskell monad tutorials. Now
that everyone is hearing about YC, they think they need to learn what the Y
combinator is and then blog about it.

Why not just contribute to the Wikipedia article?

~~~
tjr
Having read Mr. Vanier's musings on programming languages for several years, I
highly doubt this situation is as you posit.

Regardless, I'd much rather see the web full of blogs on theoretical computer
science than blogs on the lives of "stars" and "fashion models".

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neilk
I thought the allusion to Y Combinator was about turning a simple operation
(program) into a recursive one (business).

