On Tue, Nov 24, 2009 at 1:35 PM, Richard O'Keefe <[email protected]> wrote: > I wonder if the question of "intuitiveness" could be studied > at the level of arithmetic rather than programming as a whole. > For example, Smalltalk counts as OO-imperative, but has > bignum and ratio arithmetic built in and standard: 6/4 gives > the answer 3/2, not 1.5. Java _has_ bignum arithmetic, but > doesn't let you use ordinary notation with it. And so on.
seems like there is a range of essential vs. inessential mental complexities that one has to grok to really grok a given programming language, this whole "how close to Real Math does it come" being an example. so maybe we can study "intuitiveness" of a programming language in terms of the things which are general problem-solving issues vs. issues about a particular concrete implementation. (in reality i think as jef raskin used to say that 'intuitive' is b.s. and is more just another word for 'familiar'.) e.g. a particular paradigm (e.g. imperative) makes sense to a given individual, but then they get totally tripped up by the horribly non-standard vs. math details (cf. limits on ranges of values). sincerely.
