> Representing mathematical notation is not any harder in an imperative language than a functional one: it's just an AST. Not quite - it's a bit trickier. Comm

> Representing mathematical notation is not any harder in an imperative language than a functional one: it's just an AST. Not quite - it's a bit trickier. Common mathematical notation used by mathematicians is not formal, as you often hear people on HN complain about. The same expression means different things in different contexts, and even those contexts are not easy to extract formally. ab could mean the multiplication of two variables, or something else, and occasionally you'll see both uses in the same section/proof. Mathematicians don't want to be formal to the level that computers require. It'll really slow them down.