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Sure, I'm not saying it's not important at all. It's very helpful to be able to have some shorthand instead of using Latin abbreviations for everything like the
by jordigh 10y ago
Sure, I'm not saying it's not important at all. It's very helpful to be able to have some shorthand instead of using Latin abbreviations for everything like they did in the fifteenth century.
It's just that people that are relative outsiders to the mathematical community give it way more importance than mathematicians do. This is particularly true of computer people, I think, because compilers and interpreters are very rigid about the syntax that they accept. Computer people pass these expectations into mathematics and assume that mathematical writing has some strict, rigid syntax that if not religiously followed nothing makes sense.
Terry Tao has something to say about these "compiler errors":
https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TerenceTao27/posts/TGjjJPUdJjk https://plus.google.com/u/0/+TerenceTao27/posts/TGjjJPUdJjk
- goldfather8 10y agoNotation is created to encode information - the intent here. A silly example: replacing self with a snowman unicode. There is no reason to do so - but now when you look at a buffer, you will be able to see all instances of self instantly. Its about parsing semantics, not making things pretty (despite the package names).