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Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question
From: |
Rusi |
Subject: |
Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question |
Date: |
Sun, 29 Mar 2015 19:25:43 -0700 (PDT) |
User-agent: |
G2/1.0 |
On Monday, March 30, 2015 at 7:25:42 AM UTC+5:30, Óscar Fuentes wrote:
> Another issue is related to what Pascal Bourguignon mentions, and my
> reply to Stefan: the abundance of symbols adds mental strain.
> Furthermore, using shorter textual representations for objects makes the
> code almost cryptic, moreso when such representations uses symbols taken
> from a large pool. That's my experience and, IIRC, there are studies
> that back that impression.
One of the most fundamental DNAs of a programmer is what we may call
'batch-moding' Examples from more specialized to more universal:
- preprocessing string search to get fancy algorithms like KMP
- Use a compiler rather than an interpreter
- Write a program (to do a computation) rather than do the computation
(on pen-paper)
The same principle applies to the wetware in the box atop our shoulders.
So if you take Stefan's
has_type env exp type
vs
Γ ⊢ e : τ
The first is ok and preferable to the second if its to be written once
(or a few times). As it becomes increasingly frequent the demand for
(something like) the second will correspondingly increase.
"Something like" because
Stefan:
> Some of those letters/signs have meaning shared within a fairly large
> mathematical
> community while others are much more specific to a specialized subfield.
Here are TWO points that are separate and deserve orthogonalization
1. Mathematicians do good compression of their subject
2. Mathematics is a cottage industry – one uses gzip, one LZ, one good-old
huffman
Many arguments seemingly against the first, are under the hood, arguments
against the second.
> The usual advice about descriptive names and
> self-documenting code applies.
Yes... Between
has_type env exp type
vs
Γ ⊢ e : τ
Some will find the second frightening; the first ok
Some will find it exactly the opposite -- "prose" and "prolix" are quite close
How much are these judgments objective? Genetic-structural? Just plain
illiteracy/bad-habits?? Open questions...
[And questions unrelated IMHO to the systems used by a certain Mr. Noah to
design a large boat on which our ancestors were collected]
-------------------
tl;dr Unicode is an ISO standard – something mathematicians have never heard of.
Seems like a good idea to take their knowledge and discard their ignorance
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, (continued)
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Rusi, 2015/03/25
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Emanuel Berg, 2015/03/28
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Rusi, 2015/03/28
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Rusi, 2015/03/28
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Óscar Fuentes, 2015/03/29
- RE: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Drew Adams, 2015/03/29
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Óscar Fuentes, 2015/03/29
- Message not available
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question,
Rusi <=
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Pascal J. Bourguignon, 2015/03/29
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Stefan Monnier, 2015/03/29
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Óscar Fuentes, 2015/03/29
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Stefan Monnier, 2015/03/29
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, tomas, 2015/03/30
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Óscar Fuentes, 2015/03/30
- Message not available
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Pascal J. Bourguignon, 2015/03/30
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Stefan Monnier, 2015/03/30
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Marcin Borkowski, 2015/03/30
- Re: if vs. when vs. and: style question, Óscar Fuentes, 2015/03/30