> Variable scope This goes against the very nature of what mathematical variables are like! The whole point is that the symbols are suggestive. This kind of th

> Variable scope This goes against the very nature of what mathematical variables are like! The whole point is that the symbols are suggestive. This kind of thing allows the reader to quickly get up to speed with what the symbols are all about. As a side-effect, an unconventional use of symbols is usually quite grating to the experienced mathematician. Usually: - x, y, z stand for variables - i, j, k stand for subscripts and superscripts - m, n stand for integers - theta, phi stand for angles - alpha, beta stand for real numbers of some sort - capital letters are usually sets, transformations and such > Strict typing Again. Mathematics is about abstraction. Here "+" means that you can add the two objects, whatever they are. That's all there is to it. Of course, they are mentally typecast to the more general type. The point of this overloading is that, again, its suggestive nature makes it easier to read and write. The abuse is so pervasive that something like 1 + A can easily mean that, yes, 1 is the identity matrix. > Anonymous Objects I agree. Although it's much easier to, once and for all, declare "Let f(x) = x^2" and use "f" instead of the anonymous function every time. All that this kind of thing highlights is, IMHO, the fundamental difference between being a mathematician and being a software developer (and I've said it before if you look through my comment history): - Mathematicians manipulate a given symbol, often in the thousands of times, in their heads or on paper - Software developers read a given line of code, often in the thousands of times, in order to understand what the code does These differences drive, IMHO, 99% of the difference in notation.