I didn't say "formal semantics", I said "fixed semantics", as in "something you understand and can apply consistently within a context". Within the context of

I didn't say "formal semantics", I said "fixed semantics", as in "something you understand and can apply consistently within a context". Within the context of a single code-fragment, the semantics are not changing. They might change from example to example, but that's perfectly reasonable. My assertion is that when people say "I think in pseudo-code", they actually mean "an idealised version of language X", where language X is some paradigm or language they understand well. I just wrote a blog post about this very subject, based on the flood of comments (shameless self-promotion follows): http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=802780 http://news.ycombinator.org/item?id=802780