Foundations are often missing: semantics. This is the dividing line, I find, between practitioners and researchers. Like most dichotomies there is some bleed ov

Foundations are often missing: semantics. This is the dividing line, I find, between practitioners and researchers. Like most dichotomies there is some bleed over between the two groups: I consider myself a practitioner but I tend to think in terms of semantics and try to keep up with the research. I know of many researchers who dabble in practice and build things with the fruits of their labours. The difference between soil and foundation is almost as vast as the difference between soil and atmosphere. For people who think about programming in foundations they're more interested in how solving recurrence relations can lead to better optimizations; more generally speaking, how formal calculation of programs is influenced by or limited by language.