Logic for Programmers

Back when I was in college, I took some philosophy classes just for fun. I discovered when I took Symbolic Logic that while everyone else was struggling with the class, I was finding it pretty easy, because chaining together a proof in symbolic logic felt just like programming. It was the same mental steps: you have the starting conditions, there's an endpoint you want to reach, and you need to chain together these fundamental operations in order to get there. (And sometimes you needed to see how to break them apart: if you need to prove P AND Q, then proving P separately and proving Q separately were usually easier steps, and then once you've proved P and you've proved Q then you've proved P AND Q. Which felt a lot like refactoring a large function that did two things into two separate, smaller functions that do one thing each).

Looking through the sample chapter, I'm reminded of my experience with symbolic logic class. It looks like it'll be much the same thing, but flipped on its head: instead of knowing programming and using that knowledge to make symbolic logic easier, this looks like it'll be about knowing symbolic logic and using that knowledge to make programming easier. Seems pretty useful; I'll give the sample chapters a more in-depth read soon.

Looks like a nice book, but.. I feel like no serious work with this ambition today should omit (maybe it is present, not sure from the ToC) the Curry-Howard isomorphism, propositions-as-types, and from it following the analogy between logics and lambda calculi.

I really like this: https://disi.unitn.it/~bernardi/RSISE11/Papers/curry-howard....

I think every programmer should understand the consequences of CHI to the discipline, which are profound. It means that there is no need for classical logic as a separate metalanguage, the properties of programs could also be expressed in the programming language of your choice. Furthermore, it shows that "running the program" and "reasoning about the program" are ultimately the same processes, which raises some good philosophical questions about testing for example. But also about how can we approach the program design, maybe we can just "calculate it" from the constraints. It also opens us to things such as supercompilation.

I think the discipline needs to move towards formal understanding how different programming languages and logics express similar ideas, because it's a really powerful tool of mutual understanding.

(Also, I personally find the typed LC notation, especially with type checking and inference, easier than the classical logic notation. It might be the reason why logic is considered too complicated.)

I was waiting for the longest time for Hillel to finish his book, I don't like early drafts, glad he's completed it!

Reading some comments in this thread is borderline depressing: half of the people complaining this isn't more abstracted and generalized mathematics and the other half complaining there's too much computer science and is not about coding only.

Which means that this book is exactly perfect for programmers interested in learning about computer science. Might be a niche, but it is a real audience.

Looking forward to reading this, I am one of the people who preordered. I've often heard people with degrees say that they regret not being better at the material in this book, so for many peope this will be a chance to practice these skills in a way that their CS/math/physics/engineering degrees didn't really enable.

Also, Hillel (author) has a blog that's absolutely worth checking out as well as some great conference talks which are on YouTube, he's on the short list of speakers who I automatically watch any of their talks.

I read the free part. Looks interesting, but the math heritage is dominant as promised.

It seems to favor the compact and efficient kind of code that is brittle in the hand of a mildly competent junior dev, or a heavy multitasking senior.

I like smart code, in fun projects, but on the job I prefer fast to read and to reason code. Don’t try to be fancy.

So I guess that’s a book to challenge my assumptions. I like that. Thx.

Congratulations to Hillel for finishing the book!

This looks great. Most logic books are written by and aimed at mathematicians or philosophers, with basically zero involvement of practical programming applications, while the author here has a software engineering background and it shows.

Thank you for sharing, really appreciate Hillel's content!

I would buy this book, but reading examples of simplify the condition is hard. I don't know the rules that apply to this. Do you know any other book that describes these rules?

I would love to support and get a print copy but I just refuse to buy from Amazon.

Looking at the table of contents, I see no mention of Gödel/incompleteness theorems or limitations which is not a great sign. It does look well structured though but I'd probably recommend just going with "Introduction to Logic" by Tarski and "Metalogic. An introduction to the metatheory of standard first order logic." by Hunter. Those served me well and are fairly understandable for a non-mathematician (imo).

Alternatively hop straight into Prolog (Art of Prolog, Craft of Prolog).

Thank you Hillel Wayne. I did the your TLA+ book twice . I am sure this will be a great book.

Trying to buy this on Amazon seems to trigger a bug.

If I do "buy now," I get a strange text-only "out of stock" page.

If I add to cart and try to check out, I'm redirected to the "switch account" page, where only my currently logged-in account is listed.

I buy things on amazon ask the time and have never seen this before.

EDIT: whatever that was, it's fixed now. I was able to purchase the print book.

I'd like to buy this, but when I try to add it to the Leanpub cart, it won't add it.

The problem I see with the book is copy editing. It is self published on lean pub, which I have seen has poor copy editing.

    This marks the completion of a project that took five years of work, six bookwriting professionals, fourteen domain experts, and fifteen public alphas.

    This has been, without a doubt, the biggest and most exhausting project I've ever done. The examples in the discarded drafts alone could make a second book. The cursed knowledge I've gained on LaTeX and typography could fill a third (or at least a couple of entertaining blog posts). Self-publishing was simultaneously the worst and best decision I made.

    Now excuse me I am going to sleep for a month.

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The footer say HTML code generated by Claude. But who did the css? and who did the js? Tangentially, is html code the correct term if all of it is in a single file or is it still html + css + js code seperately in a single file?