learning the basics of λ-calculus
book says the term λx. (x x) has 4 sub terms :
λx. (xx)
(xx)
left x in (x x)
right x in (x x)
BUT not the x in λx
why is this?
is it because the y in λy (something) is only pointing out which variable in (something) is the "abstract" variable, or the one that takes on values to whatever (something) is applied to?
in which case why is λx. (x x) different to (xx) ?
I'll be blogging my progress through the exercises in
"Type Theory & Formal Proof"
I'm on the last chapter of the University of Finland's Haskell mooc course.
Of all the languages I've tried over 30+ years
* #haskell pushed me to think in terms of higher-order functions - and also to value the importance of types
* #prolog was the first to make think declaratively and to solve problems by riding on its internal (search) mechanism
* #6502 on the BBC micro gave me empathy for what's happening "on metal"
* #lean opened my eyes to the power of #cs theory to check maths
What #unixlike operating systems do you know which are easy to port? Something like #NetBSD. I wonder if there is anything written in #commonlisp or #rust
There are some options but I'm not sure how much easy are they to port. I've heard many positive comments about bare metal development using Rust. I wonder how is common lisp in this regard.
I have extensive programming experience but not on bare metal or kernel programming.
Boosts for wider participation in the discussion are welcome.
Hey fedi, I need some advice regarding managing identities online:
I am now studying CS, and as much as I dislike it, GitHub and LinkedIn "profesional" profiles have become a requerimient.
My conflict arises when that need clashes with not wanting to have PII on my profiles. But not wanting to segregate my contributions on two different accounts.
What do you folks do?
I was an #EE undergrad, when I backed into #CS. This was the age when assembly was the JavaScript of the day and structured programming was the state-of-the-fart. So, it was a jolt, when I first encountered Test-Driven Development #TDD in the early 2000s, thanks to the luminaries like Kent Beck, et al. Brilliant stuff!
But, at the risk of being drawn and quartered, I do say that TDD is a bit of a misnomer and an overstatement. Honestly, answer this: do EEs really create the hardware test suits first, before conducting analysis and design, and do CSs really create the software test suits first, before performing analysis and design?
No, we do not! We analyse the problem, we study the requirements, we search for inspiration in the literature, we sip our tea or coffee, we select a candidate solution, we create a plausible design, we implement a prototype, then we test—yes, THEN, WE TEST—if our wild imaginations have any basis in reality at all.
So, I prefer a more down-to-earth description of TDD, which says, "test early, test often, test as much as practicable", not "test first, because".
Research Fellow – Generative Audio AI
Centre for Vision, Speech and Signal Processing (CVSSP), University of Surrey, UK
Join the GenAI Hub to research generative models for audio and multimodal content. #PhD in #EE, #CS, #AI or related field required. Expertise in #AudioML, diffusion models, or related areas essential.
Deadline: 13/05/2025
#AcademicJob | #PhDStudentship
#PhD Position – Computational Music Perception (#AURA Project)
Institute of Computational Perception, JKU Linz/Vienna
Work on real-time musical interaction, combining ML, #MIR, and embodied avatars. Strong background in #CS, #AI, or related fields; music knowledge is a plus. Supervision by Carlos Cancino-Chacón & Gerhard Widmer.
Deadline: 01/06/2025
https://www.jku.at/en/institute-of-computational-perception/
So my very young god child wants to build robots. After some basic electric circuits and an intro to logic, we will do a bit of #bash scripting. For starters, making the robot say looped a nursery rhyme.
for (( c=1; c<=5; c++ )); do echo "es isch amol en Maa gsii, de het mal ehn hole Zah kaa, in dem Loch im Zah hets en Brief kaa uf dem isch gstande"; done
What other bash lines should we play with? #linux #cs #teaching
A permanent "computer science research engineer" position is open within my research team at Télécom Paris (Palaiseau, France): https://institutminestelecom.recruitee.com/l/en/o/ingenieure-ou-ingenieur-de-recherche-en-informatique #cs #joboffer Boosts apreciated!
My first W3C specification has been posted by the W3C. Super excited, cant wait to get the others in!
https://www.w3.org/submissions/semantic-versioning/
Read more about it here: https://cleverthis.com/news/clever-semantic-versioning-w3c-submission/
To my #CS #professor friends on MathsTodon.xyz: what #programming languages are you teaching as the "proper first language" to your freshmen, and what are the delights and dismays thereof?
Some 30y ago, I taught C and ML to the CS undergrads—my two favourite classic languages. But, boy, they were a handful to teach to novices. But then, you lot might well have an easier task now, given that a typical CS freshman today knows several languages already (at least #Python and/or #JavaScript
), by the time they enter the uni.
The two main problems in computer science:
Cache invalidation, naming conventions, and off-by-one errors.
The rise of AI research in a graph — see how its ArXiv submissions compare to other fields over the past decade. #AI #ArXiV #ArtificialIntelligence #DL #ML #CV #NLP #XAI #AIResearch #CS #ComputerScience #DataScience #Research #Revolution #AIBoom #AIRevolution
I have an offspring who graduated with the May 2024 class (but was actually done in Dec 2023) who needs a #JobOpportunity
He has a #CS degree *and* #Linguistics from a well-known #NorthEast school. He had a great co-op at a prestigious research institution. He worked as a TA to the #software students and was prominent in the linguistics lab, contributing to a paper he helped present at a national conference
He doesn't know I'm posting this, but I believe he's looking for a software #engineering position, remote or in the #NorthEast #US. If there is related linguistics work so much the better.
I think it would be a good time to reinstantiate the mirror network for the # arXiv. It’s an essential piece of the global research community in math, physics, computer-science and adjacent fields. Under the current circumstances it should not only be hosted in the US.
Doc Freemo 
