It would be nice if every programmer owned a copy of Abramowicz and Stegun, and every mathematician knew at least one programming language.
The Mathematical Hacker
131–135 of 135 posts
Re: The Mathematical Hacker
#132Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hardly. It's a simple equation that has been independently discovered for as long as we've had algebra.
That's not the same as being obvious. Obvious means clear at first sight, or clear to a child. If you have to work for it, it's not obvious.
It was clear to me as a child of maybe 8. Granted, in this day and age it's much easier to come up with elementary math, but I would say that particular equation meets the obviousness criterion of patent law, based on the aforementioned historical evidence.
Re: The Mathematical Hacker
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
The part about us being teachers more than engineers or programmers jumped at me. I've long held the belief that code should be written far more for those reading it than for the machine executing it. Your comment builds on that and made me think of this mantra: "The machine executing my code to produce an application is a side-effect. The main purpose of my code is to teach others how I control the machine into prod…
"Our design of this introductory computer-science subject reflects two major concerns. First, we want to establish the idea that a computer language is not just a way of getting a computer to perform operations but rather that it is a novel formal medium for expressing ideas about methodology. Thus, programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute. Second, we believe that the…
Right down my alley :) That's a long overdue reading for me. Thanks!
Re: The Mathematical Hacker
#134Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel somewhat similarly to you about the wonderful influx of math via the functional languages these days. I think this article misses the boat on this one when the author considers that lisp hackers avoid math by seeking abstraction---when really there's a lot of math there too.
Yes, there's lots of great math in programming languages research (it's my field, and I quite enjoy it), but I think the point was that it's only being used to solve "our" problems, not the domain problems that people fund CS to solve.
Hi Bruce,
I'm reaching out to CS researchers interested in language design for my company. Would you like to talk about building languages for saving healthcare? If so, shoot me an email!
Re: The Mathematical Hacker
#135Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say blaming programmers is a bit wrong, blame the business; most businesses don't pay programmers to write good code, they pay for fast code that generally works. They don't want to pay too much because how hard can it be to put database data onto the screen. Most programming simply doesn't require math beyond elementary arithmetic. You think most programmers have time for formal proofs?
Every business wants cheap and fast. And responsible professionals insist on doing things correctly anyways. You don't blame the business when someone builds a bridge that collapses when it gets windy, you blame the person who designed it wrong. Same thing with code, nobody is forcing us to do it wrong, and doing it right doesn't take significantly longer. Programmers just need to be educated and learn how to write c…
Imperfect code that's done cheaper and faster could be more acceptable to your client with no moral or legal ramifications for you (ie as long as you make the client aware of the drawbacks and nothing bad like people dieing could occur). An exception would be programming in the medical fields. Other than those cases, comparing most programming to bridge building is silly.
The next difficulty is defining correct code. It's going to be difficult to find consensus beyond anything basic.