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Re: Work on Basic Mathematica Stephen!

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  • Subject: [mg131028] Re: Work on Basic Mathematica Stephen!
  • From: Bill Rowe <readnews at sbcglobal.net>
  • Date: Tue, 4 Jun 2013 06:00:30 -0400 (EDT)
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On 6/3/13 at 3:35 AM, fateman at cs.berkeley.edu (Richard Fateman)
wrote:

>No, my point, though I may have worn it out with repetition, is that
>using Mathematica for computer science, or implying that it
>represents computer science best practices has many hazards.

Where is it implied Mathematica represents computer science best
practices? Why should this even be an expectation for
Mathematica? Mathematica clearly has its roots in mathematics
and physics -- not computer science. Mathematica's tagline is "a
system for doing mathematics" not "a system for doing computer science".

>One of which is that it misuses common terms in ways that are wrong.

You have pointed out Mathematica uses terms differently than is
standard for computer science. Since my background is not
computer science and given your background, I assume you are
correct on this point. But, using terms differently from
standard computer science usage is far from wrong.

>For example List is used for a vector or array.

Which is perfectly reasonable from either a mathematics, physics
or engineering perspective and consequently not wrong from those perspectives.






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