Lingua Lambda

What book should I buy to get a foundation for following the discussions at lambda-the-ultimate.org? I often feel there's some theoretical stuff I'm missing to fully follow the discussions. Ps. I'm not looking for a 800 page bible.. Something slightly more easy to approach maybe..

thanks in advance!

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Have you read the getting

Have you read the getting started thread?

nice :) Thanks for the hint

nice :)
Thanks for the hint

What languages do you know, and which do you use regularly?

Also, for more modern languages, do you follow the general problems they are trying to solve? (Corollary: Have you heard the folk name of a particular problem and wondered what it was all about?)

Your first question:

Your first question: Problems from the users perspective or..? Like message-passing based languages trying to solve easy parallel programming?
Your second question: More or less: no

I think the Getting Started

I think the Getting Started thread is a bit misleading. "Types and Programming Languages" by Benjamin Pierce is only mentioned once, near the bottom, yet I suspect that it is the book you are looking for. It is about 500 pages, but that's not a very good reason to avoid it.

I agree

What you are really saying is that the Research Papers section is somewhat monolithic and doesn't explain why those papers are there for beginners and intermediaries to read.

Getting Started in the navigation pane should probably point to a different link, and that link should then reference the original thread. A lot of the links in the thread are broken and it really just wastes time for people looking to dive in with confidence.

Also, that thread doesn't mention Turbak and Gifford's book, because it was published well after the thread took place.

If you can come up with a

If you can come up with a better page, I'd be glad to put it up. Otherwise we may end up waiting for the wiki...