On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 21:29 +0000, Andrew Coppin wrote: > Jonathan Cast wrote: > > Where, in the history of western civilization, has there ever been an > > engineering discipline whose adherents were permitted to remain ignorant > > of the basic mathematical terminology and methodology that their > > enterprise is founded on? Why should software engineering be the lone > > exception? > > > > No one may be a structural engineer, and remain ignorant of physics. No > > one may be a chemical engineer, and remain ignorant of chemistry. Why > > on earth should any one be permitted to be a software engineer, and > > remain ignorant of computing science?
> Indeed. Because abstract alebra is highly relevant to computer > programming. Oh, wait... Beg pardon? That was an argument? I'm sorry, but I can't infer your middle term. > Many people complain that too many "database experts" don't know the > first thing about basic normalisation rules, SQL injection attacks, why > you shouldn't use cursors, and so forth. But almost nobody complains > that database experts don't know set theory or relational alebra. I didn't know this. I intend to start. But, in any case, you picked your counter-example *from within software engineering*, at least as broadly understood. My claim is that the computer industry as a whole is *sick*, that we are simply going about this enterprise of dealing with these (memory-limited) universal Turing machines (= implementations of lambda calculus = universal recursive functions) *wrong*. More cases of this, within the computer industry, re-enforces my claim, rather than weakening it. > Don't get me wrong, there are mathematical concepts that are relevant to > computing, You mean like monads? > and we should encourage people to learn about them. But you > really *should not* need to do an undergraduate course in mathematical > theory just to work out how to concat two lists. Look, if you want (++), you know where to find it. Or are you complaining that you shouldn't have to study mathematics to understand what (++) and, say, the choice operation on events, have in common? jcc _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe
