Edward Cherlin wrote:
On Tue, Aug 5, 2008 at 10:32 PM, Yoshiki Ohshima <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
... Now, computer languages are like mathematics, but much more complex
in many ways. It is built on top of some axioms, but the set of
axioms tends to be very big. The notation is less ambiguous than
typical mathematics one because one of the intended readers of the
notation is the computer.
Actually, to the mathematician, programming is a fairly simple concept
that can be expressed in several different ways as the working out of
only two basic concepts, such as the S and K combinators (Unlambda or
J), or Lambda expressions and application (LISP and many related
languages). Most programming languages have a good deal of unneeded
and counterproductive complexity added on, like C++.
The current ACM has the last half of a great interview with Donald Knuth.
The whole is great, but the second can be read stand-alone. He was a
and is a mathematician by most lights, but said in this interview,
"Software is hard. My experience with TeX taught me to have much
more admiration for colleagues that are devoting most of their life
to software than I had previously done, because I didn't realize how
much more bandwidth of my brain was being taken up by that work than
when I was doing theoretical work."
--Scott David Daniels
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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