Re:Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004)
by posterboy on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @03:28AM
(#15641779)
To employ a metaphor, brainfuck is so close to a turing machine, it is the computer. At least, a general purpose computing machine without program is not a complete computer. On the upside, the machine definition is perfectly readable, because it's so simple.
Re:Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004)
by Grustaf on Monday November 06, 2017 @03:19PM
(#15638688)
> I typically cannot make any sense
The operative word here is "I"
And computer languages are obviously designed to be understandable by both humans and computers, but it is still the human that has to bend to the ways of the computer.
Re:Problems of Traditional Math Notation (2004)
by posterboy on Tuesday November 07, 2017 @03:32AM
(#15641797)
> but it is still the human that has to bend to the ways of the ...
... elder programmers. who would be called computers in olde times.
The real problem is symbolism, though it's necessary, because only in symbols can we express a wrong statement, while on the other hand you can't take an apple and another apple and have three in the end.
If programs were written for computers to read, we would still be writing them in machine language. Quite the contrary - programming language design is to a large degree a human-interface problem, because programs are primarily written to be read by humans: our teammates, our successors, even ourselves, coming back to the project after working on something else.
The existence of Brainfuck demonstrates that computers are indifferent to the qualities which make a programming language useful or legible to humans.
The irony in your comment that "math is written for humans to read" is that I find traditional math notation to be practically illegible. I typically cannot make any sense out of the pseudocode in a CS paper until it has been translated out of traditional math notation into some more familiar, programming-language-style notation.