Who's interested? What are you planning to do? Why do you think it's good for Codewars?
Tell me why you guys are interested in it. Tell me why others might be interested in it. If it teaches them something new, that's a plus too.
It's good for programmers to know it, and people seem to realise that. It's also perceived as fun to work with. People indeed are gaining an increased understanding of computation, and are applying that in other languages.
Making it accessible and easy to work with ( ie, solve and author kata in ) can only grow the user base, and we aim to provide that accessibility and easiness - and we have fun doing it. We are also learning a ton doing it.
What's good for subscribers is ultimately good for Codewars.
[D]oes this sound convincing?:
As of writing this, in katas either directly or thematically related to lambda calculus, there are:
- 15 katas (10 of those approved)
- Over 2600 solves
- Ratings from 5kyu to 1kyu
- 10 unique authors (not including translations)
(This is based on a collection of all related LC katas I could find. I may have missed some)
So the base of interested users is already there. By cementing LC as a language, those numbers would only grow. Additional benefits would be:
- More katas published, as the difficulty in authoring is lowered (auto compile, no syntax checking, etc)
- More consistent difficulty levels, as LC ‘basics’ (eg. currying/church encoding) can become ‘assumed knowledge’ for harder katas.
- Katas can focus on one thing, rather than needing to reintroduce the entire field of LC
Benefits for new users:
- Learning LC greatly facilitates understanding of functional languages
- The ‘fun’ of an esoteric style language, but which builds real understanding and knowledge ( to be applied in other languages )
Benefits for Codewars:
- Increases catalogue of available languages
- Adds to the low number of ‘esoteric style’ languages
- Probably is the only programming site around that offers it
I don't know if Kazk is going to be impressed with 2600 solves and the other numbers - but I am. I'm also not sure if Kazk sees yet another language as an advantage or rather as a disadvantage, but I think LC, as "functional assembly", would be an asset to CW. Kazk may want more big languages rather than myriad small ones, but this is a very fundamental small language.
It shows that you can create anything from almost nothing, and it's actually fun to use and not annoying like BF.
It may seem like a very limited low level language, but once you write a couple of functions it oddly becomes like a high level language that is capable of supporting elegant code.
Personally, I think it's beautiful and it helped me become a better programmer.
@JohanWiltink: I can only fully agree with these sentiments; I feel exactly the same way.
1936 - Alan Turing invents every programming language that will ever be but is shanghaied by British Intelligence to be 007 before he can patent them.
1936 - Alonzo Church also invents every language that will ever be but does it better. His lambda calculus is ignored because it is insufficiently C-like. This criticism occurs in spite of the fact that C has not yet been invented.
@JohanWiltink: my emphasis. Lambda Calculus encodes Life, The Universe and Everything, and does it well.
In Jan 2022
- a new LC Factorial kata achieved 17 unique solvers in a week ( .. including the author )
- #lambda-calculus was added in Discord - and generated this priceless comment:
Me: Let's see what's going on in #lambda-calculus , i am sure they talk some interesting stuff there and i will learn something cool
Karrot: ... so I call this function with an infinite amount of arguments, reversed, and...
Me: ... imma fukk outta here, kthxbye