Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!hsdndev!cmcl2!kramden.acf.nyu.edu!brnstnd
From: brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu (Dan Bernstein)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Fortran vs. C for numerical work - expression notation
Message-ID: <1893:Dec1200:57:4190@kramden.acf.nyu.edu>
Date: 12 Dec 90 00:57:41 GMT
References: <8339@lanl.gov> <914:Dec923:50:2990@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <2309@enea.se>
Organization: IR
Lines: 37

In article <2309@enea.se> sommar@enea.se (Erland Sommarskog) writes:
> Also sprach Dan Bernstein (brnstnd@kramden.acf.nyu.edu):
> >I sure hope not. The computer treats complex types quite differently
> >from integer types, and I want to be reminded of that difference when
> >I'm programming. Until a computer can *do* mathematics I don't want to
> >pretend that it can *talk* mathematics.
> The computer treats integers and reals different too, don't
> you want to be reminded by that each time you write a program?

Yes. This is one of the advantages of Forth.

Integer addition is just like normal addition except for overflow. I'm
willing to accept a normal plus sign for it.

Floating-point addition is vastly different. The only reasonably
standard notation I've seen for it is Knuth's plus-in-a-circle, but this
conflicts with other uses of circles. I'd be happier with fadd(x,y) than
with x + y.

> And the day you discover you have to go from reals to complex,
> do you just love having to write the code, just because the
> language - either by built-ins or overloading - does not allow
> you use infix notation for complex numbers?

Huh? It's not my problem if you have an incompetent editor.

I use my editor to reduce my typing time. I use my programming language
to express instructions to a computer. I use my pretty-printer to make
my programs more readable on paper. Each stage has a different view of
floating-point addition, and that's how it should be.

> Or maybe, software
> maintenance is something you never have to bother about?

How does it hurt maintenance to use realistic notations?

---Dan