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The distinction between discovery and invention is somewhat arbitrary. Yes, it would be weird to talk about people inventing a new species (except in synthetic

The distinction between discovery and invention is somewhat arbitrary. Yes, it would be weird to talk about people inventing a new species (except in synthetic biology), but people talk about "discovering" a mathematical concept, so why not a family of programming languages?

melling 8y ago
There’s a reason for that in mathematics: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16768/discover-or-invent-in-mathematics-context https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/16768/discover-o...
- aidenn0 8y ago
  Computer Science is just a subfield of mathematics...
  - winceschwab 8y ago
    There's this mythical belief that programmers like to tell themselves: "I'm as good at math as I am programming." It turns out that for many, this idea is far from the truth. The similarities are superficial. The notation is abstract artifice. Math is not programming. Programming is not math. If you try to take what you know, and instictively use in one context, and try to walk it over to the other, and directly reapply it, you'll surprise yourself at the amount of disappointment experienced.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
Barrin92 8y ago
I'll gladly accept that Lisp was discovered, but PHP was definitely invented.