Are you curious about the foundations of computing? Have you ever wondered (after too many hours on Hacker News) "what's a y-combinator?".

In this presentation we will explore the nature of computation through the lens of the lambda calculus, discover how you can create numbers from nothing but functions, and finally explain what a combinator is, and why you might want one.

Topics include: - Computability and the Turing Machine - The Lambda Calculus - Church Encoding - Recursion - Fixpoints - The Y combinator - Functional Programming

Audience members will be introduced to computability theory and the lambda calculus through practical examples and demonstrations with the goal of revealing the fascinating theory underlying day-to-day programming.

Suitable for anyone familiar with a modern programming language and comfortable with code samples in python, ruby, or javascript.