The Y Combinator

Add your own abstraction layer:

"The Y combinator allows us to define [1] in computer languages that do not have built-in support for [2], but that do support first-class [3]."

An example:

[1] startups

[2] operating costs

[3] solutions

Your turn!

Richard Gabriel also tried to explain Y:

http://www.dreamsongs.com/NewFiles/WhyOfY.pdf

Pretty good write up. The only part I did not care for was the pompous: "[...]I think the reason is that he wanted to attract the kind of programmers who were smart enough to have heard about the Y combinator"... The author has confused ignorance with intelligence.

Here is a derivation of the Y Combinator in Perl:

http://use.perl.org/~Aristotle/journal/30896

Ah, a new internet meme. A few years ago, it was Haskell monad tutorials. Now that everyone is hearing about YC, they think they need to learn what the Y combinator is and then blog about it.

Why not just contribute to the Wikipedia article?

I thought the allusion to Y Combinator was about turning a simple operation (program) into a recursive one (business).