Thoughts on what to read next

[Chris Lowis]

After the last meeting we had a chat in the pub about some things to do next as a group. We did discuss setting up a separate email list for the group rather than Tom’s book, but I thought I’d mail this list and we can carry on the discussion on a new one if appropriate. 

I mentioned a couple of books I’ve never got around to working through, but might be fun to read together. The first was “From NAND to Tetris: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles”[1]. I guess the title is fairly self-explanatory, but I thought it might take us on a different track from Understanding Computation as a starting point, into the realm of machines and hardware rather than functional languages (we may even get to solder something!).

The other was “To Mock a Mockingbird and Other Logic Puzzles: Including an Amazing Adventure in Combinatory Logic”[2], and in particular the second section of that book on combinatory logic. It’s one of those books that keeps getting cited as a classic in the field of functional programming, but whenever I try and get my head round it, it just doesn’t jive with me. I think working some of the puzzles together might be fun. 

Cheers! 

Chris 




[1] http://www.nand2tetris.org/
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Mock_a_Mockingbird

[Roland Swingler]

I haven't actually made it to any of the meetups yet, but I'd definitely be interested in working through the NAND to tetris book with others. I got to chapter 4 several years ago, and I remember it being really good fun. They provide emulators for the hardware iirc, although it would be interesting to see if you could do something with real hardware as well - I have no experience in that area, but don't know if others in this group do? A lot of the book is project-based - i.e. you have to do the work in order to get the most out of it.

R

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[Tom Hall]

Kestrels, Quirky Birds, and Hopeless Egocentricity is a ruby book
based on To Mock a Mockingbird.
http://combinators.info/

[Joel Chippindale]

I've set up a separate email list and so have moved this thread there https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/london-computation-club/4ari5vK15Kc

J.