In article <mailman.10083.1400332708.18130.python-l...@python.org>, Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Sat, May 17, 2014 at 10:52 PM, Albert van der Horst > <alb...@spenarnc.xs4all.nl> wrote: > > That may be tong-in-cheek but mathematicians do exactly that. We > > use roman, greek and hebrew alphabets in normal italics and boldface > > and then some special characters for element-of, logical-or, integral signs, > > triangles and what not. Underbarred and upper twiggled, as a suffix a prefix > > or a superfix. All in the name of avoiding names longer than one character. > > > > When we run out then there are creative ways to combine known characters > > into Jacobi symbols and choose functions. > > > > There are even conventions that allow to leave out characters, like > > "juxtaposition means multiplication" and the Einstein summation convention. > > This, I think, is the main reason for the one-character variable name > convention. Why else are there subscripts? Instead of using "V0" > (two-character name), you use "V?" (one-character name with a > subscript tag on it) to avoid collision with multiplication. > > > Now translate E=mc^2 into Java. > > Dunno, but in Python it would be: > > assert E==m*c*c > > And would probably fail, because that's all floating point :) > > ChrisA Nah. Python has relativistic duck typing: >>> c = 186000 >>> m = 100 >>> E = 3459600000000L >>> assert E==m*c*c >>> -- https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list