Thanks Ric,
That's a very helpful thing to do. I will go through your list and
clarify. As I look at your list, there are some points that correctly
summarize my position, some that require tweaking and some that require a
bit of work. I am going to bed soon and I am out tomorrow morning, so I may
not be able to get into the rest until the late afternoon. However a few
clarifications follow:
My position so far:
1) I want to see a system with an executable notation to aid in the teaching
of math.
2) For a number of reasons the J system looks a likely candidate.
5) I like the way that tacit programming avoids global nouns and allows
verbs to "jump" over intervening code to get at the arguments outside the
tacit programming - it is an important and valuable asset to have the
equivalent of predictable compound verbs.
3) I think that the tacit notation as it is will confuse a target audience
and doesn't match existing mathematical notation closely enough.
4) I want to use only primitives and not previously defined verbs
(subroutines), because that is how mathematical formulae are defined -
however, other people should be free to use subroutines, programs and
control structures as they wish.
Will be in touch tomorrow,
Don
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