Thanks for an excellent write up to the idea. That was very clear.
I am very intrigued and was looking at purchasing that book to learn more - but then I saw the price. I'll have to scrounge a copy from a library somewhere. I thought on demand printing was going to reduce the costs of books on the long tail!
Oh yeah, it's more expensive than I thought :/. Happily, I was lent it by a friend.
You might have some luck getting it as an ebook from the library. My university's library seems to only have it as an "electronic resource", and it's a pretty big library.
I like the book, but a good part of it is just background. It goes through a bunch of variations on the lambda calculus in building up to the "pattern calculus". If you're already familiar with the basics, you might be better off just reading some papers on it. (Hopefully there are some you can read for free, but I'm not sure.)
I am very intrigued and was looking at purchasing that book to learn more - but then I saw the price. I'll have to scrounge a copy from a library somewhere. I thought on demand printing was going to reduce the costs of books on the long tail!