3 ms·
>If neither formal math and engineering are necessary nor sufficient to produce good cooking, we can safely conclude that cooking is not math or engineering. B
by jolux 9y ago
>If neither formal math and engineering are necessary nor sufficient to produce good cooking, we can safely conclude that cooking is not math or engineering.
Bingo. Good thing we're talking about programming, and not cooking.
I asked if you understood what you were saying because you can't really cook declaratively, recipes are inherently imperative. The comparison to programming thus only fits for imperative languages.
>Haskell is used by, to a first approximation, no one. Which was my point.
If that's your point, then I agree. Not sure how that's in disagreement with my points though.
>No, I'm not.
So what then were you intending to convey by vague references to incomprehensible academia? Surely you weren't meaning to imply they're just wrong, were you?
>The point here is that while, on the most fundamental level, the universe may indeed be made of math, that doesn't mean that treating everything with the math toolbox is the best way to proceed.
Yes, but such a general claim is not what I'm arguing for.
>Expecting that math methods will produce great software is a fundamentally goofy idea -- just as it would be to expect math to produce great poetry, painting, architecture, or anything else (and the same for engineering).
Well, it of course depends on what you mean by "great" software. But I still think you're missing the point here. Computer science is a lot closer to math than poetry, painting, and architecture are. There is a direct, elegant, simple, formal correspondence between programs and proofs. The same cannot be said for those other disciplines.
My only claim is that proofs are slightly more solid intellectually and formally speaking than programs, so converting more programs into proofs will make easier to reason about, and since programs can be easily converted into proofs (relative to poems or architecture or paintings or whatever) that this is probably a good idea. I still don't understand what your objection to that claim is.
- codygman 9y ago>>Haskell is used by, to a first approximation, no one. Which was my point. > If that's your point, then I agree. You are agreeing to something that is false. See my reply to the grandparent.
- Turing_Machine 9y ago> The comparison to programming thus only fits for imperative languages. I am not comparing recipes directly to programming. I used recipes as an example of something that has mathy and engineery facets, but that is not engineering or math. > So what then were you intending to convey by vague references to incomprehensible academia? I wasn't making "vague references" to anything, nor did I say that academic languages were "incomprehensible". I did say they were bizarre, which is a different thing entirely. I'm not sure why you find it hard to believe that someone could understand academic languages of the sort you evidently prefer, and yet somehow still choose not to use them. Your attitude seems to be that anyone who doesn't use your preferred methods is "anti-intellectual", "ignorant", or any of the various other personal insults you've used. Why not just go off and write some awesome software using your methods? If they work as well as you claim, you'll have some hard evidence to back up your assertions >There is a direct, elegant, simple, formal correspondence between programs and proofs." You are defining great software as "software that can be proved to behave in accordance with some formal spec", while people who actually use software (i.e., the people who pay the bills) define great software as software that performs the task they need to have done, can be written economically, and that is easy to use. By your definition, a great recipe would be one that came out exactly the same every time, even if it tasted like shite, or took three weeks to make, or...