David Beazley - Lambda Calculus from the Ground Up - PyCon 2019
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN calls it a brilliant, mind-bending introduction to lambda calculus for programmers.
What it is
David Beazley's PyCon 2019 tutorial derives the lambda calculus from the ground up in Python, using only single-argument functions. He builds booleans, numerals and more with no other language features.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2019 to 2021.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec ehsankia · 2019-05 · on “Python built-ins worth learning”
Just watched his PyCon 2019 where he derives lambda calculus from scratch in Python, and he had similar shell magics going on there too. Great tutorial if you've never seen lambda calculus before, definitely brain twister. [this video]
Strong rec sethgecko · 2019-08 · on “One-lined Python”
If you want your mind to blow up I recommend watching this year's "Lambda Calculus from the Ground Up" PyCon talk by the wizard David Beazley [this video]
Strong rec globular-toast · 2021-06 · on “Lambda Calculus Examples (2009) [pdf]”
For someone fluent in Python, David Beazley gives a brilliant introduction to lambda calculus here: [this video] This is great fun to follow through on a rainy afternoon!
Recommends avador · 2020-08 · on “A circuit-like notation for lambda calculus (2015)”
This talk by David Beazley (Lambda Calculus from the Ground Up) might be useful: [this video] Zero and one come in around the 35 minute mark (after booleans).