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Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'....

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"Rui Maciel" <rui.maciel@gmail.com> wrote in message 
news:4e279ec1$0$31827$a729d347@news.telepac.pt...


> So, to sum things up, programming is in fact applied math and therefore a
> programmer needs to employ mathematical reasoning to develop software. 
> Yet,
> as no one bothers to prove their code to be correct, either by 
> incompetence
> or by simply not being able to afford it, the "correctness" aspect of
> mathematical reasoning isn't really valued by a programmer, which 
> represents
> a chasm between programming practices and how a mathematician is expected 
> to
> tackle problems. And this means that the thought processes may be seen as
> very similar, but the details in which programming has been drifting away
> from the correctness aspect of math have since made them considerably
> different.

Programming is lot more complicated than any mathematical formula I've ever 
seen (for example in having a very large number of possible inputs and 
expected outputs).

And to prove correctness, don't you need some sort of specification? 
(Because if you try and prove two different programs, A and B, which both 
happen to be correct, and accidentally get them mixed up, both will pass. 
Until you try and use B instead of A!)

In that case, we're back to square one with the specification, which 
presumably is itself some sort of program...

-- 
Bartc 

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Thread

A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Chad <cdalten@gmail.com> - 2011-07-19 12:20 -0700
  Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Ben Bacarisse <ben.usenet@bsb.me.uk> - 2011-07-19 21:26 +0100
  Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... "Kleuskes & Moos" <kleuske@xs4all.nl> - 2011-07-19 14:02 -0700
  Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Ulisses Araujo Costa <ulissesmonhecosta@gmail.com> - 2011-07-20 02:23 -0700
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... "Kleuskes & Moos" <kleuske@xs4all.nl> - 2011-07-20 03:46 -0700
      Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Ulisses Araújo Costa <ulissesmonhecosta@gmail.com> - 2011-07-20 09:50 -0700
  Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Rui Maciel <rui.maciel@gmail.com> - 2011-07-21 04:27 +0100
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... "BartC" <bc@freeuk.com> - 2011-07-21 12:27 +0100
      Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm.myrealbox@gmail.com> - 2011-07-23 17:47 +0000
        Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... "io_x" <a@b.c.invalid> - 2011-07-23 22:16 +0200
          Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... blmblm@myrealbox.com <blmblm.myrealbox@gmail.com> - 2011-07-25 19:39 +0000
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-21 05:11 -0700
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... August Karlstrom <fusionfile@gmail.com> - 2011-07-21 15:14 +0200
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-22 03:50 -0700
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-23 06:33 -0700
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 03:41 -0700
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 06:06 -0700
  Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 03:42 -0700
    Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-07-25 06:07 -0700
      Re: A question about thinking 'abstractly'.... Nick Keighley <nick_keighley_nospam@hotmail.com> - 2011-08-10 03:57 -0700

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