4 ms·

You have to be kidding. Mathematical and sheet music are both organically grown. They're like C++ for math and music, but with about fifty times more cruft. Ou

by tormeh 10y ago

You have to be kidding. Mathematical and sheet music are both organically grown. They're like C++ for math and music, but with about fifty times more cruft. Our forebears just kept adding on to and expanding purely crap syntax because getting people to change the existing way they do things is nigh impossible. Going on to hail this as "refined" is beyond me. EDIT: Sometimes, in maths, different disciplines have conflicting syntax. Rather than fixing this, we just resorted to overloading (see i vs. i in maths and physics). If any programmer encountered that kind of thing in a computer language they would describe it as clearly evil. EDIT: For a funny take on musical notes, see: https://youtu.be/-3WuQxnA7Hg https://youtu.be/-3WuQxnA7Hg

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
This is dead on, IMHO. I mean, we joke about some language, company, or product being fetishistically backwards compatible, but we've got nothing on music, which is somehow backwards compatability obsessed, but also not actually backwards compatable, because note frequencies have slipped, and most people only know a tiny subset of the actual notation. Math is even worse. It's syntax piled on top of syntax. It's actually evil.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  > note frequencies have slipped Surely you're not talking about modern tuning standards.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Old tuning frequencies varied: The actual frequencies of the notes weren't standardized for centuries.
rz2k 10y ago
Don't the different namespaces conflict with the idea of burdensome cruft? Just as finding a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible, a universal syntax without namespaces sounds inefficient.
TheOtherHobbes 10y ago
Sheet music is terrible until you try to design a better system. It's easy to design a better toy system. It's very, very hard to design a non-toy system that encapsulates all of the information in a full orchestral score and makes it readable for players of all instruments.
wfo 10y ago
Mathematics is organically grown but reinvented every few years or so. Look at a mathematics paper from 50 years ago. Look at one now. Look at one 100 years ago. Mathematicians aren't dumb. There's some element of tradition (that's a small part of the reason why many mathematicians prefer chalkboards to whiteboards) but most of the reason we use the notation we use is because it's the best way anyone has ever found to express rigorous, technical, creative, abstract thought cleanly and efficiently. Mathematicians routinely do completely /new/ work which requires us to invent entirely new notation out of wholecloth on the spot. The techniques we use are suited to this need. When we find something that's better, we use it. There isn't anything better yet.

by tormeh 10y ago

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

This is dead on, IMHO. I mean, we joke about some language, company, or product being fetishistically backwards compatible, but we've got nothing on music, which is somehow backwards compatability obsessed, but also not actually backwards compatable, because note frequencies have slipped, and most people only know a tiny subset of the actual notation. Math is even worse. It's syntax piled on top of syntax. It's actually evil.

GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
> note frequencies have slipped Surely you're not talking about modern tuning standards.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Old tuning frequencies varied: The actual frequencies of the notes weren't standardized for centuries.

rz2k 10y ago

Don't the different namespaces conflict with the idea of burdensome cruft? Just as finding a complete and consistent set of axioms for all mathematics is impossible, a universal syntax without namespaces sounds inefficient.

TheOtherHobbes 10y ago

Sheet music is terrible until you try to design a better system. It's easy to design a better toy system. It's very, very hard to design a non-toy system that encapsulates all of the information in a full orchestral score and makes it readable for players of all instruments.

wfo 10y ago

Mathematics is organically grown but reinvented every few years or so. Look at a mathematics paper from 50 years ago. Look at one now. Look at one 100 years ago. Mathematicians aren't dumb. There's some element of tradition (that's a small part of the reason why many mathematicians prefer chalkboards to whiteboards) but most of the reason we use the notation we use is because it's the best way anyone has ever found to express rigorous, technical, creative, abstract thought cleanly and efficiently. Mathematicians routinely do completely /new/ work which requires us to invent entirely new notation out of wholecloth on the spot. The techniques we use are suited to this need. When we find something that's better, we use it. There isn't anything better yet.