81–90 of 90 posts
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On the scale of the universe we're virtually non-existent :)
On the temporal / spatial scale of the universe we are virtually non-existent. On a scale that ranks everything in the universe according to physical / informational complexity & organization, we appear so far to be quite significant.
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And we're still using '*' for multiplication in our programming languages instead of '×' because using anything other than ASCII for programming is just too hard, or too weird, or whatever.
We already tried going full-APL but it only proved that it wasn't a good idea. I mean this is impressive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 but I still think the notation is too obscure.
When you say full-APL do you mean in one leap? Then I agree it's not a good idea, but how about going to APL in stages? First introduce just some operators (e.g. × ∧ ∨ ∈ ≥ ≤ ≠ → ⇒ only), then introduce more gradually until all APL operators are in use? Then keep on introducing other symbols from Unicode not in APL.
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We already tried going full-APL but it only proved that it wasn't a good idea. I mean this is impressive https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a9xAKttWgP4 but I still think the notation is too obscure.
> We already tried going full-APL but it only proved that it wasn't a good idea. When you say full-APL do you mean in one leap ? Then I agree it's not a good idea, but how about going to APL in stages ? First introduce just some operators (e.g. × ∧ ∨ ∈ ≥ ≤ ≠ → ⇒ only), then introduce more gradually until all APL operators are in use? Then keep on introducing other symbols from Unicode not in APL.
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X = Y x Z B = T ^ F v T P = Q n R u S C = U cross V D = U dot V Area = Width by Height i.e. just capitalising names means that you can define macros that operate as infix operators: L . R -> L dot R L dot R -> Dot[L, R]
What language are you referring to? I'm not quite sure I understand your examples. -------- Related: In Haskell, any 2-argument function can be used (or defined) infix by surrounding it with backticks, eg: add 2 3 is equivalent to: 2 `add` 3 ---- And you can use this to cleanly write curried functions (often predicates) with their arguments flipped, eg: vowelCount = length . filter (`elem` "aeiou") ---- Note that fun…
But unicode in code is terser. Instead of `elem`, we could use ∈ [U+2208].
To flip parameters, we could use the bidi-mirrored glyph, i.e. ∋ [U+220B, the bidi-mirror of U+2208]. In fact we could even make it a feature of the language grammar to automatically detect whether a mirrored glyph is being used, and perform the transformation.
We could even automatically detect and transform canonically equivalent graphemes using the non-spacing version of `not`, e.g. ∉ [U+2209, canonically equivalent to U+2208,U+0338], and ∌ [U+220C, mirror of U+2209 and equiv to U+220B,U+0338].
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Full APL isn't just unicode, though, it's also a total commitment to single-character operators as the primary language construct. Take a look at some Agda or Unicode-enabled Haskell code to see it really improving readability... though hampering type-ability.
Agda's use of Unicode makes it far less readable to me. Readability is a subjective thing, of course.
Interesting that there is no mention of ancient China, where money and accounting were invented. The Chinese for buy and sell are 买 and 卖 respectively, the first indicating spending money and the second indicating receiving money. Granted I don't know what I'm talking about, however I do know Chinese, and I believe these characters far predate the 15th century as do most Chinese characters. Perhaps someone can elabor…
Both those characters are simplified, which is to say largely different from how they would have appeared throughout Chinese history. Buy in traditional is: 買 Sell is: 賣 Both of these would be closer to the ancient form of expressing these characters. I don't see "+" nor "-" in either of these characters.
Sell is 買 with a 士 radical on top. The simplified version standardized the 買 portion, but it doesn't affect the observation.
The Hindus, like the Greeks, usually had no mark for addition, except that “yu” was used in the Bakhshali manuscript Arithmetic (which probably dates to the third or fourth century). That's interesting. The Silk Road ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silk_Road ) was in full swing at that time. This is pure guesswork, but multiple classical Chinese characters now pronounced yu (予,与,餘,逾,與) meant something close to additio…
Had a quick check for Basque/Estonian/Finnish online dictionaries as the major outlying European languages out of further interest. Basque alone seems to use the recognizable root ek... (one would suppose from common root with the Sanskrit for one: eka ). Estonian and Finnish seem way closer to Latin languages in most cases .. I checked words like and, plus, sum, total . Lots of readily distinguishable slight variati…
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Everybody uses juxtaposition for multiplication (or dot when some separation is required) and horizontal line for division. * and / are poor man's substitutes when all you have is ASCII. × is used for vector products, Cartesian products and products of algebraic structures in general. The only place I've ever seen × or ÷ being used in arithmetics was primary school. No idea why they use them.
÷ is the symbol for division since it symbolises a fraction, with the two dots taking the place of the numbers. I'd say this is why, as some people have noted, : can also be used for division in some contexts: it represents a ratio, which is again just a fraction.
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Had a quick check for Basque/Estonian/Finnish online dictionaries as the major outlying European languages out of further interest. Basque alone seems to use the recognizable root ek... (one would suppose from common root with the Sanskrit for one: eka ). Estonian and Finnish seem way closer to Latin languages in most cases .. I checked words like and, plus, sum, total . Lots of readily distinguishable slight variati…
For Finnish, you may have missed the now deprecated word for summation, "ynnä", meaning "as one". It's not from Latin or Chinese, though - at least not recognizably so.
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Some apple keyboards have # printed, I'm surprised they don't all have it.
I'm going to assume he has the British keyboard which has a pound symbol rather than the hash (or... pound...) symbol. http://parkernet.com/applepro/images/wireless-british.jpg