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From: Robert Maas, http://tinyurl.com/uh3t on 6 May 2008 20:04
> From: Jon Harrop <j...(a)ffconsultancy.com>
> There is a lot more to programming than mathematics.

I say the same thing, only stronger: Most programming deals with
data processing, and most data processing is in fact processing
numerical values and/or text, and most of the rest of programming
is device control such as driving graphics displays. The fraction
of programming that deals with mathematical theorem proving is
infinitesimally small. The fraction of programming that deals with
any aspect of symbolic/abstract math in any form is microscopically
small. Mathematics (beyond arithmetic) is a tiny niche market, not
large enough to warrent inclusion in any general-purpose
programming language except as an optional add-on module.
From: Jon Harrop on 4 May 2008 12:21
xahlee(a)gmail.com wrote:
> Of interest:
>
> a blog post from Wolfram Research:
>
>
http://blog.wolfram.com/2008/04/29/today-we-broke-the-bernoulli-record-from-the-analytical-engine-to-mathematica/
>
> this illustrates, partially, the power of having a full set of
> mathematical functions build in, as part of the language.

There are two main problems with this:

Firstly, finding the 10 millionth Bernoulli number is of no practical
importance.

Secondly, the implementation is written almost entirely in C and is simply
called from Mathematica code.

IMHO, there are better illustrations of the power of the Mathematica
language.

> from the perspective in the evolution of computer languages, one
> characteristics is that the language becomes easier to use with more
> power. e.g., assembly-like, C, Fortran, to C++, Java, to awk, bash,
> then Perl, Python, and tcl, PHP, VisualBasic, Javascript, NewLisp, and
> Mathematica.

Subjective.

> One way to put a language in a evolution class, is simply to think of
> how many lines of code is typical to do one thing. Another way to
> think of this is, what level of learning a language requires its user
> to use it.

You can easily pick a task that Mathematica is very poorly suited to, which
completely inverts your notion of "evolution".

> We could, for example, say that all languages in year 2020, will all
> have full mathematcial functions build in.

There is a lot more to programming than mathematics.

--
Dr Jon D Harrop, Flying Frog Consultancy
http://www.ffconsultancy.com/products/?u
From: David B. Benson on 5 May 2008 20:35
On May 4, 9:21 am, Jon Harrop <j...(a)ffconsultancy.com> wrote:
> ...
> There is a lot more to programming than mathematics.

Second that.

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