On Feb 21, 2009, at 4:48 PM, Bakul Shah wrote: > > There have been a number of studies about why math is hard > but I don't see any evidence terseness has been identified as > a main cause. Perhaps it is more cultural than anything > else.
Perhaps. I have plenty of anecdotal evidence that the notation is a hurdle. > >> APL also uses an extended character set for terseness. >> Why? Because of transmission costs, not because it makes it easier >> to read. > > Please see Ken Iverson's "Notation as a tool of Thought" > Turing Award paper (search for p444-iverson.pdf). In it he > says > > "The thesis of the present paper is that the advantages of > executability and universality found in programming > languages can be effectively combined, in a single coherent > language, with the advantages offered by mathematical > notation. Thank you. I was wrong. My previous encounter with APL was among telecomms engineers who were not computer scientists at all, and liked APL for one reason only, namely how 'short' programs were. This was in the early 80s. _______________________________________________ r6rs-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.r6rs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/r6rs-discuss
