HN Books @HNBooksMonth

If you are familiar with combinatory logic, perhaps an explanation featuring enchanted forests full of songbirds would seem unnecessarily complicated. Nevertheless, "To Mock a Mockingbird" is one of the most delightful books I've ever read.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192801422/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

Perhaps, in the end, it's just a form of recreation. One thing that interests me about such fantastic metaphors is to what extent they trigger or inhibit the "math reflex" of recognizing a problem one has already solved.

If there isn't a spoiler title, how many people familiar with Lambda Calculus have an "Aha! This is the Lambda Calculus" moment before it is revealed?

⬐ jcr

The author of "To Mock a Mockingbird", Raymond Smullyan, has written extensively on logic, and he has books all across the spectrum of difficulty. He even wrote what some consider to be "The Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hardest_Logic_Puzzle_Ever

⬐ moron

His book about the Tao is one of my favorite books ever.

As has been noted repeatedly: “To Mock a Mockingbird” by Raymond Smullyan. It’s one of the finest mathematics/logic books ever written for the intelligent layman.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192801422?ie=UTF8&tag=...

(Yes, that’s an affiliate code. Strip it out and replace with your favourite charity. “Raganwald" is an acceptable answer for “favourite charity.”)

⬐ rams

Seems to be out of print on Amazon. Most sellers don't ship to foreign countries. Tough luck for people like me.

⬐ ohgodthecat

If you can't find it anywhere for cheaper (like me) buy it from here: http://www.bookdepository.com/Mock-Mockingbird-Raymond-Smull...

They ship to a very large amount of places for free. My only complaint is that because it is shipping from another country it takes a while to get to you and you don't get any tracking codes from them.

⬐ jamesbritt

http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0192801422/ref=tmm_pa...

Some of these places say they ship from the UK, some ship from the USA. One ships from Germany. Does this help?

I'm not suggesting anyone ought to know it off the top of their head. The only reason I remembered it is because I am a big fan of Raymond Smullyan's "To Mock a Mockingbird," the best introduction to Combinatoral Logic ever written:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0192801422?ie=UTF8&tag=...

As a result, I remember it as the Kestrel which he introduces in the same chapter as the Mockingbird, Identity Bird, and Lark.

But actually, I really don't expect anyone to remember it. My point was a little sarcastic, I was trying to point out that programming is at least as much about stuff you use regularly or read currently as it is about stuff you learned a few years ago.

If you don't use whatever you were taught, you will lose it. And if you learn it another way--I'm sure there are people who use #returning without knowing anything about combinbatoral logic--it might be just as good. Not knowing what a K combinator does is not particularly harmful to being an amazing software developer.

I am not denigrating a degree in computer science. I think it is an amazingly excellent way to start a career (be that working for others or yourself) in software development. But, OTOH, after a person has been working for a while, I think it carries less weight than what they have done with themselves since graduating.

If a really good degree leads to a really good first job, which leads to a better seond job, and so forth, I am all for the really good degree that started the process.

One of my favorite books is To Mock a Mockingbird, by Raymond Smullyan (http://www.amazon.com/Mock-Mockingbird-Raymond-M-Smullyan/dp...). It presents itself as a puzzle book that teaches combinatory logic along the way. Not only is it lots of fun to work through the puzzles, but at the end, you have a pretty solid understanding of the lambda calculus.