Re: [Haskell-cafe] Comments from OCaml Hacker Brian Hurt

2009/1/15 Derek Elkins :

On Thu, 2009-01-15 at 18:27 +0000, Lennart Augustsson wrote:

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On Thu, Jan 15, 2009 at 6:04 PM, Paul Moore wrote:

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Mathematical precision isn't appropriate in all disciplines.

That's very true. But programming is one where mathematical precision is needed, even if you want to call it something else.

Actually programming requires -far more- precision than mathematics ever has. The standards of "formal" and "precise" that mathematicians use are a joke to computer scientists and programmers. Communication is also more important or at least more center stage in mathematics than programming. Mathematical proofs are solely about communicating understanding and are not required to execute on a machine.

Hmm. I could argue that coding *terminology* and words used for human-to-human *discussion* of programs can afford to be far *less* precise, simply because the ultimate precision is always available in terms of actual executable code (which offers no scope for misunderstanding - it's a concrete, executable object, with precise semantics defined by the implementation). Mathematical terminology has to be much stricter, because there's no fallback of "use the source". That's not to say that I disagree entirely, but it's not as black-and-white as this discussion makes it seem. Paul.