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Symbols are nice. Code is awful: too verbose and obscure. So what's the point here?

• mkagenius 10y ago
  I thought some people understand code much easier than the mathematical symbols - the nested for loop kind of a gives more intuition for whats happening than two sigmas. Ofcourse people used to mathematical symbols will not have any problems with them.
  • sklogic 10y ago
    There were countless attempts of replacing this notation with something more structured, with OpenMath [1] being probably the most advanced (and yet failed) take on this, as well as multiple CAS (Axiom, Macsyma, Mathematica and alike). But imperative loops? No, it's not going to be anything useful and won't make the notation more machine-readable. [1] http://www.openmath.org/ http://www.openmath.org/
    • mkagenius 10y ago
      Interesting stuff. Actually this would just be a list which I would keep on adding to, I do not intend it to be machine readable at all. The purpose of this is to make non-math programmers less afraid while reading papers with some math symbols sprinkled in it. If a programmer who is not that good at maths can keep up with the paper he is reading by forming a somewhat easier understanding of the paper by having a better understanding of the formulas then it achieves the purpose. Think of it as a cheatsheet for programmers to understand those symbols, nothing more. I do not expect it to be complete with all maths formulae either, maybe 20 most frequently occurring.
      • sklogic 10y ago
        I see, I must have misinterpreted your intentions. In such a case verbosity and specialisation of an implementation may be helpful indeed.