From: ·········@lxny.org
Subject: NYC LOCAL: Tuesday 14 June 2005 Lisp NYC Meeting: Anton van Straaten on Lisp and the Lambda Calculus
Date: 
Message-ID: <d8jf9o$rlh$1@panix5.panix.com>
<blockquote
  what="official Lisp NYC announcement">

 From: Heow Eide-Goodman <·····@alphageeksinc.com>
 To: ·····@lispnyc.org" <····@lispnyc.org>
 Subject: [Lisp] Reminder: Lisp Meeting, June 14th 7:00 at Trinity

 Please join us for our next meeting on Tuesday, June 14th from 7:00
 to 9:00 at Trinity Lutheran Church.

 In the first installment of the "LispNYC: Best Presentations" Anton van
 Straaten re-presents "Lisp and the Lambda Calculus":

     Every Lisp programmer is familiar with the keyword LAMBDA.
     But what does it really mean, and where does it come from?
     When John McCarthy invented Lisp in 1958, he borrowed a
     notation for the representation of functions from a
     mathematical formalism known as lambda calculus.  But
     although McCarthy borrowed aspects of the syntax of lambda
     calculus, he didn't quite get the semantics right at first.
     This led to one of Lisp's most longstanding and famous bugs:
     the funarg problem, relating to the difficulty of
     implementing functions as first-class values in a language.
     
     This talk takes a wild ride through the history of human
     thought about logic and computation, through the invention
     of lambda calculus and the invention of Lisp, the discovery
     of the funarg problem, its ultimate solution in the lambda
     calculus, and the adoption of that solution by Lisp and
     Scheme.  Along the way, the lambda calculus will be
     explained and interactively demonstrated, in breathtaking
     clarity, using real code, showing the foundations of the
     basic logical constructs for which Lisp is famous.

 This is a must-see for both Lisp aficionados as well as anyone with an
 interest in programming language history.  Knowledge of Lisp is helpful,
 but not necessary.

 Anton van Straaten is a software developer and consultant with a strong
 interest in the design and development of programming languages.  His
 experience ranges from the development of successful programmer tools,
 to complex financial services applications.  He has presented at MIT's
 Lightweight Languages Conference and the International Lisp Conference. 
 His work on programmer tools and interest in languages has led him to
 study the formal foundations of programming languages.  As part of this
 study, Anton developed SchemeDS (http://www.appsolutions.com/SchemeDS/),
 an executable version of the formal semantics of the Scheme language,
 the only such implementation publicly available.



 Directions to Trinity:

   Trinity Lutheran
   602 E. 9th St. & Ave B., on Thomkins Square Park
   http://trinitylowereastside.org/

   From N,R,Q,W (8th Street NYU Stop) and the 4,5 (Astor Street Stop):
     Walk East 4 blocks on St. Marks, cross Thomkins Square Park.

   From F&V (2nd Ave Stop):
     Walk E one or two blocks, turn north for 8 short blocks

   From L (1st Ave Stop):
     Walk E one block, turn sounth for 5 short blocks

   The M9 bus line drops you off at the doorstep and the M15 is near get
   off on St. Marks & 1st)

   To get there by car, take the FDR (East River Drive) to Houston then
   go NW till you're at 9th & B.  Week-night parking isn't bad at all,
   but if you're paranoid about your Caddy or in a hurry, there is a
   parking garage on 9th between 1st and 3rd Ave.


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</blockquote>


Distributed poC TINC:

Jay Sulzberger <·········@lxny.org>
Corresponding Secretary LXNY
LXNY is New York's Free Computing Organization.
http://www.lxny.org