I always thought this was up there with "monads are like burritos" in terms of how it makes things more complicated instead of simplifying them. Maybe that's just my old ass, and kids would appreciate it more. When I was a kid one of my teachers referred to the > and < symbols as "alligator mouths" and said "Just remember the alligator mouth eats the bigger number." Helped me keep those symbols straight for years.
Some past discussions. I thought it had been discussed more but maybe it turned up in other discussions rather than as a submission of its own.<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8906167">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8906167</a> - Jan 18, 2015 (24 comments)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4586692">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4586692</a> - Sept 28, 2012 (24 comments)<p><a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600736">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=600736</a> - May 9, 2009 (9 comments)
This post many years ago made me realize that there's nothing uniquely interesting about lambda calculus. That it's just weird, convoluted virtual machine that can be (barely) used for programming.