I recently wrote a blog post about the Y combinator. Since then, I've received so many useful comments that I thought it was appropriate to expan

The Y Combinator (Slight Return)

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2021-06-29 08:30:07

I recently wrote a blog post about the Y combinator. Since then, I've received so many useful comments that I thought it was appropriate to expand the post into a more complete article. This article will go into greater depth on the subject, but I hope it'll be more comprehensible as well. You don't need to have read the previous post to understand this one (in fact, it's probably better if you haven't.) The only background knowledge I require is a tiny knowledge of the Scheme programming language including recursion and first-class functions, which I will review. Comments are (again) welcome.

Before I get into the details of what Y actually is, I'd like to address the question of why you, as a programmer, should bother to learn about it. To be honest, there aren't a lot of good nuts-and-bolts practical reasons for learning about Y. Even though it does have a few practical applications, for the most part it's mainly of interest to computer language theorists. Nevertheless, I do think it's worth your while to know something about Y for the following reasons:

It's one of the most beautiful ideas in all of programming. If you have any sense of programming aesthetics, you're sure to be delighted by Y.