On Mon, Oct 25, 2010 at 10:10:56PM +0100, Andrew Coppin wrote:
Type theory doesn't actually interest me, I just wandered what the hell all the notation means.
That sounds like an oxymoron. How could you possibly learn what the notation "means" without learning about the subject that the notation is about? That's like saying "I'm not actually interested in calculus, I'd just like to know what the hell all these funny S-like symbols mean". For what it's worth, I was once in a similar situation (modulo the interest), and sent a similar query: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.functional/browse_frm/thread/bb82dc... Following that, Pierce sent me a draft of his (then upcoming) book, and I found it extremely accessible at my level (at least compared to the other book I studied, Mitchell's "Foundations", which, though full of good information, was a bit hard to digest). So I will add voice to those recommending TAPL. Cheers, Lauri