Re: Re: error with Sum and Infinity
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg102453] Re: [mg102439] Re: error with Sum and Infinity
- From: "Elton Kurt TeKolste" <tekolste at fastmail.us>
- Date: Sun, 9 Aug 2009 18:21:17 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <h5jdfe$152$1@smc.vnet.net> <200908091006.GAA16066@smc.vnet.net>
A software product of any nontrivial level of complexity will have never provide perfect solutions to the following. Design decisions: For a concept such as "SymbolicProductThreshold" there are many possible implementations, one of which must be selected in spite of the fact that there are advantages and disadvantages (known and unknown) to each option. Any choice, when made, will be based upon logic that will be transparent to some users under some circumstances and opaque to other users or in other circumstances. Documentation Limitations: It is prohibitively expensive to design the documentation for a system so that just the right entry magically appears after the user follows a search path that makes sense to them while they are thinking about the particular syntactical and semantic concerns of the moment. The best that we can hope for is that there is always some way to discover the Mathematica construct needed. Alternative syntax: As with a natural language, a well-designed technical language will incorporate redundancy that allows its users to reach a solution without necessarily having to find the unique solution (costly and time-consuming). This, of course, means that there are often many alternative ways to achieve some immediate objective, some of which are better than others (with the ordering depending on circumstances). Neither programming nor mathematics is a discipline in which the path to the solution to any particular problem is discovered merely by following the signposts left by some previous traveller. These are creative processes in which there is a responsibility on the part of the user to test their product and use appropriately robust development processes so as to minimize the likelihood that some nuance of the program and its environment yields an incorrect result. I see a discussion groups such as this as forum by which we help each other through these inherent difficulties -- it is one part of the "appropriate development process." Regards, Kurt Tekolste
- References:
- Re: error with Sum and Infinity
- From: Richard Fateman <fateman@cs.berkeley.edu>
- Re: error with Sum and Infinity