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I think what followed this quote made quite a good job at explaining what exactly he meant with this statement: That people tend to have a limited view of math

• titanomachy 12y ago
  One thing that I think is true (and maybe this is what Ono-Sendai meant) is that compared to many languages, Haskell's syntax is relatively close to the notation used by mathematicians. And notation can strongly influence the way we think about things. I was introduced to programming before abstract algebra, and when I took my first algebra class the comparison to Haskell was inevitable. Actually it turned out to be quite helpful: strongly-typed functional programming can be a good supplement to learning algebra.
  • Ono-Sendai 12y ago
    Well, for example, Haskell obviously makes heavy use of functions, which are from maths. Procedures, on the other hand, aren't. In maths, you often write something like let x = ... An imperative language statement like x = x + 1; isn't something you see in maths, that is not a valid equation.
    • agos 12y ago
      it's very similar to Recurrence Equations, minus the time indication (the absence of which is the cause for a number of bugs).