Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la

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From	Hans Aberg <haberg-news@telia.com>
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Subject	Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la
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On 2012/03/12 06:49, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote:

> As I understand it, Fortran introduced the multi-character variable
> name, pretty much universal in programming languages, but
> mathematicians haven't caught on yet.

Math started out with sentences like "add the first unknown quantity to
the second unknown quantity", but over the centuries, it was eventually
shortened to expressions like "x + y".

So computing takes a step back in evolution, in part due to a limited
character set. But that is slowly changing in view of Unicode and STIX
fonts, which are already in use in proof assistants, for example, Isabelle.

Otherwise, there are a lot of multi-character symbols in use in math,
for example, standard functions. Users of TeX know that these are
typeset tighter than the corresponding variables. So $sin$ will be
typeset as three variables with extra space between them indicating
implicit multiplication, whereas to get the function name one would have
to use $\sin$.

Hans

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Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la SLK Systems <slkpg3@gmail.com> - 2012-03-09 14:36 -0500
  Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la "Derek M. Jones" <derek@_NOSPAM_knosof.co.uk> - 2012-03-10 00:24 +0000
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la Hans Aberg <haberg-news@telia.com> - 2012-03-10 15:06 +0100
  Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la glen herrmannsfeldt <gah@ugcs.caltech.edu> - 2012-03-12 05:49 +0000
    Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la Hans Aberg <haberg-news@telia.com> - 2012-03-13 00:10 +0100
      Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson <johann@2ndquadrant.com> - 2012-06-07 18:15 +0000
        Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la Hans Aberg <haberg-news@telia.com> - 2012-06-10 01:12 +0200
  Re: Have we reached the asymptotic plateau of innovation in programming la "Jonathan Thornburg [remove -animal to reply]" <jthorn@astro.indiana-zebra.edu> - 2012-03-14 02:02 +0000

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