

Math: Deriving the Y-combinator - Mz
http://www.ece.uc.edu/~franco/C511/html/Scheme/ycomb.html

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Mz
I am well aware I am the queen of "...and crickets chirped." when it comes to
submissions. That actually generalizes to other forums, so it is not a left-
handed slap at HN. Anyway, I am posting this because I have a serious
question: Is there such a thing as an "N-combinator"? I mean mathematically
speaking.

When I google either term, what comes to the top are company names. But it is
possible to find the math stuff for Y-combinator but no such thing comes up
for N-combinator. This kind of came up in conversation on HN yesterday and I
had too much time on my hands this morning and began wondering about it.

Thanks.

~~~
groovy2shoes
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3955532>

When you have 26 letters to choose from, you're bound to end up recycling some
letters. Some combinators were useful enough that they got to keep their
names. I've seen at least three N combinators, but they were almost always
stepping stones to simplify later expressions and never useful enough to
memorize or allocate a reserved letter to.

~~~
Mz
Thanks. I am a calculus drop out and non programmer, so some of what goes on
here is way over my head (which is part of why I hang here).

