Re: Re: Re: Re: Types in Mathematica
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg62303] Re: [mg62277] Re: [mg62273] Re: [mg62258] Re: [mg62245] Types in Mathematica
- From: Andrzej Kozlowski <akoz at mimuw.edu.pl>
- Date: Sat, 19 Nov 2005 23:18:30 -0500 (EST)
- References: <200511191053.FAA16418@smc.vnet.net>
- Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com
On 19 Nov 2005, at 19:53, Virgilio, Vincent - SSD wrote: > > Well now it's getting philosophical. I did say "in trying to > understand", not "in trying to use". Yes, indeed. But in my understanding of the preceding discussion the advice "forget C++" referred to the attitude one should adopt when programming in Mathematica. At least that certainly was my meaning. Again, I will repeat what I meant: thinking in terms of C++ or Lisp will be no help and most likely will be a hindrance in writing good Mathematica programs. This is all I have been trying to say in this thread and no more. > > Anyway, it is always helpful to revisit first principles, novice or > not. > And since nothing is understood in a vacuum, so the suggested > comparisons. "Understanding" is a difficult "philosophical" concept. It is true that usually people "understand" new things by trying to form analogies with other things that they consider as "already understood". But once they reach a certain level of understanding these analogies usually turn out to be a ballast that needs to be ejected in order to be able to move to a higher level of "understanding". There is a vast supply of examples to illustrate this but perhaps the one that most vividly illustrates the point is the Bohr's "planetary" model of the atom. It is certainly not true that someone with no knowledge of other programming languages cannot be a better Mathematica programmer than someone who knows lots of them. the idea that the latter person (the worse programmer who knows other languages)may have a "better understanding" of Mathematica seems to me unimportant and perhaps even meaningless. Actually, I would argue that there is another way of "understanding" that is quite different form the one based on making analogy with the already familiar approach. Instead it comes from developing "intuition" through practice. This is exactly how one acquires understanding of the more abstract branches of mathematics: abstract algebra, category theory, algebraic topology etc. In fact, something like that is also true in quantum physics, where "analogy with the already familiar" is a very unreliable sort of "understanding". So, to conclude, it seems to me that either somethings can indeed be understood "in vacuum" or perhaps that the role of "understanding" in science, mathematics and programming is rather overrated Andrzej Kozlowski
- References:
- Re: Re: Re: Types in Mathematica
- From: "Virgilio, Vincent - SSD" <Vincent.Virgilio@itt.com>
- Re: Re: Re: Types in Mathematica