An argument from Justine Tunney's LC implementation [1]:
> Programs written in the binary lambda calculus are outrageously small. For example, its metacircular evaluator is 232 bits. [...] Something like this could have practical applications in compression formats, which need a small busy beaver that can produce large amounts of data. It's also just downright cool.
> For example, if you built a compression tool you could have it encode a file as a lambda expression that generates it. Since it's difficult to introduce a new compression format that most people haven't installed, you could prefix the compressed file with this 383 byte interpreter to get autonomous self-extracting archives that anyone can use.
I partway expect @tromp to show up in this thread, but see his excellent site[2] for discussion of the algorithmic information theoretical applications of LC, exploration of Kolmogorov complexity, etc.
jart is on a whole other level. I love the seeing the stuff she puts out and the writings she does. So, so, fun to be a jaw-dropped onlooker. Not to mention the tools are genuinely useful and incredibly cool. Llamafiles, alone, should win some kind of AI accessibility award.
> Programs written in the binary lambda calculus are outrageously small. For example, its metacircular evaluator is 232 bits. [...] Something like this could have practical applications in compression formats, which need a small busy beaver that can produce large amounts of data. It's also just downright cool.
> For example, if you built a compression tool you could have it encode a file as a lambda expression that generates it. Since it's difficult to introduce a new compression format that most people haven't installed, you could prefix the compressed file with this 383 byte interpreter to get autonomous self-extracting archives that anyone can use.
I partway expect @tromp to show up in this thread, but see his excellent site[2] for discussion of the algorithmic information theoretical applications of LC, exploration of Kolmogorov complexity, etc.
[edit: spelling]