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NodeBox 3From the old forum

Animated Lambda Calculus Diagrams In NodeBox 3?

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  1. Hello there!

    I just heard about this amazing (actually amazing) thing called lambda calculus. It's basically the tiniest, most versatile programming language... But it's textual notation can be scary for beginners...

    In a "newbie effort" to learn both lambda calculus and NodeBox 3 at the same time (I have zero coding experience), I was wondering if I could make a NodeBox 3 version of the visual (animated) notation invented by John Tromp. Might help me (and others?) understand better... I'll add a picture, but there are simple animated versions also.

    Here's the author's quick presentation of his lambda diagrams: "https://tromp.github.io/cl/diagrams.html"

    Might be a bit ambitious for a first ever coding project, but I like the idea, soooo... :)

    So, in my newbie mind, I'm thinking I should first build a "mini lambda self-interpreter", using NodeBox's lists features, and only then work on the visual aspects... But that's about it! :-/

    Can a user even click things and "custom-built" buttons, or enter text in the viewer pane?

    If not, I'm thinking maybe custom made nodes and their corresponding custom made parameter panes could do the trick instead...

    So here I am, hoping that some of you guys like lambda calculus enough to help me out! :)

    Any leads on where to start implementing this in (my now favorite piece of software) NodeBox 3?

    Thank you in advance!

    Cheers!

    PS: The picture below shows a 206 bit binary lambda-calculus (blc) self-interpreter.

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  2. First step: Learning about Truth Tables, and also Combinatory Logic...

    I hear Raymond Smullyan's "To Mock A Mockingbird" is a good place to start...

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