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Re:Elm for the Front End, Right Now by eastWestMath on Wednesday November 23, 2016 @08:00PM (#13027084)
Well they're both the lambda calculus, Lisp just had parentheses.
Re:Elm for the Front End, Right Now by kazinator on Wednesday November 23, 2016 @08:22PM (#13027188)
Does lambda calculus have character strings, structures, exceptions, symbols, mutable variables, quoting code as data, macros and three different kinds of object equality?
Re:Elm for the Front End, Right Now by fbreduc on Wednesday November 23, 2016 @09:59PM (#13027667)
it does have symbols
Re:Elm for the Front End, Right Now by kazinator on Thursday November 24, 2016 @01:45PM (#13032011)
Does it really?

Some of the algorithms for reducing lambda expressions are symbolic, like, say, alpha reduction. But they are not done in lambda calculus itself, as far as I can see; they are done on lambda calculus (by the mathematician, or a machine for manipulating lambda calculus terms).

Analogy: just like ordinary algebra doesn't have symbols; but of course mathematicians work with symbols and so do computer algebra systems.

Since lambda calculus is Turing complete, it can of course represent lambda calculus manipulation (via Goedel numbering of lambda terms and then working with their arithmetic encoding as Church numerals, or whatever).