Derek M Jones wrote: > > I think this issue has partly arisen because of our various interpretations > about what the term 'program understanding' means. Indeed. Part of the reason I'm posting is to discover if there is, in fact, a common definition of the term shared by the members of this list, or, if not, whether we can agree upon one for the purposes of inter-disciplinary discourse. I feel an FAQ coming on... > >In something as complex as a computer system, *complete* knowledge of the > >semantics of a C program might oblige me to apprehend everything from > >its effect on the CPU's registers to the consequent changes in ambient > > Not so. C along with most languages is defined behaviour in terms of an > abstract machine. No real world constructs need be invoked (but it is > useful for understanding why things are defined the way they are). Okay, but that then limits the term 'program understanding' to 'formal or denotational semantics of program texts', does it not? Put another way, it considers 'understanding' to be limited to what programs mean rather than what they do. I think that artificially separates understanding from many common (and, dare I say, interesting-to-PPIGers) activities such as development and debugging. Note that I'm not advocating that 'program understanding' should be routinely defined to mean taking things to the rhetorical extremes I suggested in my earlier message, but equally, I don't think it's very useful, from a PPIG standpoint, to limit it to just formal or denotational semantics either. If the term 'understanding' is too problematic, and we choose to pick another one (such as 'learning'), we still need to be careful with appropriated meanings, or we'll just end up splitting the hairs of a different animal. (For your information, I've done some looking around, but have not so far found what looks like a formal definition of the term 'understanding' that would seem to apply here. Pointers appreciated. I do hate to play the amateur psychologist in the presence of so many professionals; with luck, one will chime in and set us both on the path to 'understanding'. :-) ) > >Arthur seems to be doing the same thing here when he says: > > Arthur. You may have meant to send to Frank only The headers on Arthur's message show it was Cc'ed to the list. > >It seems likely to me that you both *do* understand what the program does, > > I only claim to be able to provide an interpretation of the likely external > effects (what you will see on the screen) of compiling and executing this > program within a certain class of computing environments. > > I would claim that I understand what you want me to say when you > present me with this program (but that is probably because I don't know > as much about psychology as I do about the C abstract machine). You are John Searle, and I claim my Chinese meal. :-) -- Frank Wales [[EMAIL PROTECTED]] - Automatic footer for [EMAIL PROTECTED] ---------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] unsubscribe discuss To join the announcements list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] subscribe announce To receive a help file, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED] help This list is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/ If you have any problems or questions, please mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
