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Dijkstra wrote extensively on how mathematically illiteracy among working programmers is why software is generally of such poor quality. He grew up in a world
by User23 6y ago
Dijkstra wrote extensively on how mathematically illiteracy among working programmers is why software is generally of such poor quality.
He grew up in a world where he could only beg an hour a week of compute time off the Americans so his community put a remarkably high emphasis on software quality and clear semantics.
And that’s really what advanced mathematics is all about: clearly communicating otherwise intractably complex ideas by letting the symbols do the work.
- OJFord 6y ago> mathematically illiteracy I rather enjoyed that! I think there's truth to it though, even at as high a level of situations where you have logic that leaves you thinking 'ok, this works... but it doesn't actually make sense' where something's hard to understand or debug because it's got tangled up into a functional but illegible mess.
- znpy 6y ago> And that’s really what advanced mathematics is all about: clearly communicating otherwise intractably complex ideas by letting the symbols do the work. I agree, and I think you nailed the point perfectly. The point that the article misses completely. Thank you.