Re: Three Kinds of Logical Trees

On 25 Jul 2005 22:06:50 -0700, "Marshall Spight" <marshall.spight_at_gmail.com> wrote:

>dawn wrote:
>> Marshall Spight wrote:

[snip]

>On a related note, I really don't think that if you sat down and,
>without thinking about representation, wrote down all the operators

 ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
     I think that this is the important part.

>that apply to string and all the opertors that apply to int, I don't
>think you'd see much overlap. You certainly don't in most popular
>languages. Now, it's certainly possible to treat strings as if

[snip]

>> > I'm imagining you and some mathematician about a millenium ago, sitting
>> > in an ivory tower. The guy comes to you and says, "I'm thinking about
>> > this idea for a new number, which I call 'zee-row.' It represents the
>> > absence of a number. You could use it as the result of some operations
>> > that are currently considered illegal today, like subtracting X from
>> > X."
>> > And you'd say, "But that's not how the average person intuitively
>> > perceives subtraction. Let's not pursue that approach; let's do
>> > something more user-friendly."
>>
>> humorous, but not accurate nor to the point IMO. I wrote a paragraph
>> on the flaws in this analogy, but it was boring even if true, so I'll
>> spare you.
>
>Well, I didn't particularly intend it to be humorous, although
>perhaps I am hilarious just out of habit. Ha ha, I'm funny!
>
>My point was that I don't think it's a good idea to use "how
>people think about things today" as a hard design constraint,
>because it precludes any possiblility of coming up with *a better
>way to think about things*, which is where the *real* progress
>is made.

     And even so, it can take a long time to get it into use.

[snip]

>[Let me just state for the record that my singular indefinite "he"
>is not gender specific. Rather it is a consequence of the lack of
>a gender inspecific pronoun in the English language, coupled with
>a wish to avoid the difficulties of speaking of indefinite people
>in the plural. Void where prohibited. Driver carries no change.]

     There are two. One is "he" which has a gender-neutral meaning when gender is unknown. The other is "it".

[snip]

>> > As for cool examples, check out quicksort in Haskell:
>> > http://www.haskell.org/aboutHaskell.html
>> >
>> > Blew my mind the first time I saw it.
>> Will do.
>
>I can't recommend looking at lots of different languages enough.
>If all you've ever encountered is the Algol-family, like I had
>when I started this whole thing, you've encountered only a very
>narrow slice of what's possible.

     That was interesting code. I am interested in how a language works in general, since it is not enough just to code the part that language is good for.

[snip]

>> Yup, let's just hope no one else is attempting to follow this one.

     Bzzzt!

>On the one hand, one imagines that there are a thousand lurkers
>for every poster. On the other hand, this thread feels like just
>you + me + crickets. I think I hear them chirping now.

     I do *not* chirp while reading.

Sincerely,

Gene Wirchenko Received on Tue Jul 26 2005 - 19:01:02 CEST