Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!ames!ig!arizona!gudeman From: gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc Subject: Re: NOT Educating FORTRAN programmers to use C Message-ID: <17511@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> Date: 2 Feb 90 23:32:24 GMT Organization: U of Arizona CS Dept, Tucson Lines: 26 In article khb@chiba.kbierman@sun.com (Keith Bierman - SPD Advanced Languages) writes: > >*sigh* Do mathfolk forget what > T -1 > A = (A A) > >means a week after writing it down ? It is absurd to believe that what >has worked for a thousand years of mathematics won't work for >programming language. This is not a good anology. First, mathematical writings are usually much shorter than programs. Second, mathematical writings usually are accompanied by more English explanation than notation. Third, mathatical notation usually has a much longer time of consideration behind it than does code. Fourth, mathameticians usually either write all their own notation or independently and exhaustively review any notation writen by a co-author. I think that if a mathematitican wrote two thousand pages of dense notation with less than, say 20% of it English text, then yes, he would forget what some of the notation stands for. -- David Gudeman Department of Computer Science The University of Arizona gudeman@cs.arizona.edu Tucson, AZ 85721 noao!arizona!gudeman