An inside peek on the misgivings and mishaps of a Computer Science PhD. student... and maybe some academic posts

Greetings! My name is Mauricio Cano and I’m a Computer Science PhD. student at the University of Groningen under Prof. Dr. Gerard Renardel de Lavalette and Dr. Jorge A. Pérez. This blog will be used for talking about different topics ranging from the typical mishaps in the life of a PhD. student to more academic topics related to computer science, mathematics, logics and physics.

The story of a discreet $\lambda$

The greek letter $\lambda$ is of great importance for computer scientists. In a sense, it embodies all what computation is about! From programming challenges solved in C++ or Java to programs proved correct in Coq or Agda, $\lambda$ is a symbol that help us understand the essence of programming, of solving computable functions. Nonetheless, $\lambda$ is a discreet symbol, sometimes unnoticed by us, who use it all the time without even realizing it.

The name of this blog, as you might have guessed, plays as a tribute to the $\lambda$-calculus, invented by Alonzo Church in the 1930s. The $\lambda$-calculus serves as a model of computable functions. I might dedicate a post to its intricacies in the future. For now, if I managed to interest you in the topic, I’ll be dropping some links below about the $\lambda$-calculus and its relation to programming, specially functional programming (the list will expand periodically):