coding versus music

[jon zingale]

FWIW, my position is probably best summarized by this comment by
Yuri Manin, in an interview he states:

"I have once translated a talk by Donald Knuth into Russian. In
Uzbekistan, there was a meeting dedicated to Al'khorezmi. Knuth started
his talk with a funny statement. In his opinion, the primary importance
of computers for the mathematical community is that those people finally
took to mathematics who were interested in mathematics but had an
algorithmic sort of mind. Now they were able to do what they wanted.
Before that, this subculture didn't exist. And Knuth was describing
himself as a person whose mind is specially designed for writing software
and how happy he was that, finally, he could do what he wanted to. I take
this argument quite seriously and I do believe that among the community
of future potential mathematicians there is a sub-community whose minds
are better for writing computer programs than for proving theorems. In
the last century, they probably would have proved theorems but nowadays
they do not. I have a great suspicion that for example Euler today would
spend much more of his time writing software because he spent so much of
his time, e.g., in efforts of calculating tables of moon positions. And
I believe that Gauss as well would spend much more time sitting in front
of the screen."

http://www.ega-math.narod.ru/Math/Manin.htm



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[Roger Frye-4]

I agree wholeheartedly. The one computer course I got to take in my senior year while majoring in electrical engineering and physics saved me from electrocuting or irradiating myself in a lab. Computer math made such sense to me that I could enjoy doing the assignments instead of fumbling through vague theories and integrals.

On Wed, Feb 3, 2021 at 10:41 AM jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

FWIW, my position is probably best summarized in an interview with Yuri
Manin, where he states:

"I have once translated a talk by Donald Knuth into Russian. In
Uzbekistan, there was a meeting dedicated to Al'khorezmi. Knuth started
his talk with a funny statement. In his opinion, the primary importance
of computers for the mathematical community is that those people finally
took to mathematics who were interested in mathematics but had an
algorithmic sort of mind. Now they were able to do what they wanted.
Before that, this subculture didn't exist. And Knuth was describing
himself as a person whose mind is specially designed for writing software
and how happy he was that, finally, he could do what he wanted to. I take
this argument quite seriously and I do believe that among the community
of future potential mathematicians there is a sub-community whose minds
are better for writing computer programs than for proving theorems. In
the last century, they probably would have proved theorems but nowadays
they do not. I have a great suspicion that for example Euler today would
spend much more of his time writing software because he spent so much of
his time, e.g., in efforts of calculating tables of moon positions. And
I believe that Gauss as well would spend much more time sitting in front
of the screen."

http://www.ega-math.narod.ru/Math/Manin.htm



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[Marcus G. Daniels]

I could see a middle ground where one focuses attention to hardening certain parts of software systems using dependently typed languages, or proof-bearing code.   The motivation just isn't there to work that hard when it doesn't matter, which is most of the time.  

-----Original Message-----
From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of jon zingale
Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2021 9:41 AM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] coding versus music

FWIW, my position is probably best summarized in an interview with Yuri Manin, where he states:

"I have once translated a talk by Donald Knuth into Russian. In Uzbekistan, there was a meeting dedicated to Al'khorezmi. Knuth started his talk with a funny statement. In his opinion, the primary importance of computers for the mathematical community is that those people finally took to mathematics who were interested in mathematics but had an algorithmic sort of mind. Now they were able to do what they wanted.
Before that, this subculture didn't exist. And Knuth was describing himself as a person whose mind is specially designed for writing software and how happy he was that, finally, he could do what he wanted to. I take this argument quite seriously and I do believe that among the community of future potential mathematicians there is a sub-community whose minds are better for writing computer programs than for proving theorems. In the last century, they probably would have proved theorems but nowadays they do not. I have a great suspicion that for example Euler today would spend much more of his time writing software because he spent so much of his time, e.g., in efforts of calculating tables of moon positions. And I believe that Gauss as well would spend much more time sitting in front of the screen."

http://www.ega-math.narod.ru/Math/Manin.htm



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[jon zingale]

No doubt that developments with dependent types and the formally-provable
code movement (I feel like I can call it that) is worthy of attention. Wrt
Manin's (and by extension Knuth's) comment, I almost see this movement as
bearing fruit functorially in the mathematics community[L]. Playfully, I see
it as being analogous to what happened when American filmmakers saw what
Italian filmmakers were doing with American westerns.

The value, in the long run, of provable code I sincerely have hope for. Not
only do I see value there for the engineer of critical applications, but
also for the systems-level thinkers that will need to have a bridge between
ever higher-level abstractions and the ever complexifying bytecode beneath.
There, in that Daniel Murfet paper cited some months ago on the *Derivative
of a Turing Machine*[D], I even sense a future where tight formal logic
guides the design of neural networks.

Manin cites Euler and Gauss, and from the bit of Euler's original work that
I have read, he was clearly a *sit by the fire and calculate endless pages
of computations when one cannot sleep* kind of guy. Equally, no one would
accuse him of avoiding the challenge to prove. I would not be surprised if a
great deal of his best theorems were not inspired by a desire to simplify
calculations and from observing the data produced by his computations. I
believe that the perpetual desire to refactor and port over to new
frameworks shares sympathy with this sit-by-the-fire approach, and the dawn
of the computer has provided this tendency, new domains to inhabit.

[L] Clearly, computation has its roots in the logical community, it's
proto-languages, those of Turing and Church, predate the first mechanical
implementations, and ever since that community has never *really* strayed
far.

[D]
http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/Derivatives-of-Turing-Machines-td7599131.html



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[Russell Standish-2]

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 11:45:46AM -0700, Prof David West wrote:

>
> But — a program has two audiences: the machine (no communication here) and
> other programmers (tons of miscommunication here). This is what the reference
> from Eric Smith talks about. There is an entire, usually ignored, paradigm in
> computer science called "literate programming"  — the most prominent advocate,
> Donald Knuth.
>
> If one were skilled at literate programming, one would be communicating to
> another programmer (or herself at a later point in time) all the knowledge and
> meaning necessary for the latter to understand, modify, enhance, or correct the
> program as needs be. If possible this would be a communication skill worth
> developing — might lead to more precise and accurate communication outside the
> world of the computer.

Literate programming is alive and well in modern software engineering
- it just isn't called that. Knuth's tools which involved a special
input language, a tool for converting that to compileable Pascal and
Latex for producing humane readable printouts of the code were
fantastic for the 1980s, but are rather dated for current software
development requirements.

In C++, one uses a tool called Doxygen, which parses standard C++
code, and produces HTML, Latex and other possibilities. The "dot"
network graphics tool is used to produce interactive UML diagrams of
the class structures, and source code is annotate with hyperlinks
allowing you to click on (say) a variable name, to find out what type
it is, where it is defined and so on. Plus, there is a huge amount of
doxygen markup features available, allowing things like embedded LaTeX
equations, or adding in crafted HTML links and so on. In short it does
everything Knuth's web tool did, and more, without the need to write
in an idiosyncratic source language.

When I come across a piece of unfamiliar code, the _first_ thing I do
is run doxygen on it, and then start reading the code using a web
browser. People are sometimes amazed at how quickly I find my way
around a new code base - when that happens, I let them in on my
superpower, ie doxygen.

Doxygen handles a number of programming environments, Java, C#,
Fortran even, though not Python nor Javascript alas. Other
environments have similar tools, of greater or lesser power: eg Java
has Javadoc (which is broadly compatible with Doxygen, in fact).

Knuth should be commended for being 30 years ahead of his time with
literate programming, and should be glad the industry does finally
"get it", even if his contribution is largely forgotten, and not
acknowledged by the hordes of software engineers currently practising.


--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders     [hidden email]
                      http://www.hpcoders.com.au
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[Stephen Guerin-5]

Archive pointer to 2013 FRIAM thread on literate programming:
  http://friam.471366.n2.nabble.com/Literate-CoffeeScript-td7581862.html

Owen gave a nice WedTech talk sometime around then, too.

-Stephen

On Sun, Feb 21, 2021 at 8:24 PM Russell Standish <[hidden email]> wrote:

On Wed, Jan 27, 2021 at 11:45:46AM -0700, Prof David West wrote:
>
> But — a program has two audiences: the machine (no communication here) and
> other programmers (tons of miscommunication here). This is what the reference
> from Eric Smith talks about. There is an entire, usually ignored, paradigm in
> computer science called "literate programming"  — the most prominent advocate,
> Donald Knuth.
>
> If one were skilled at literate programming, one would be communicating to
> another programmer (or herself at a later point in time) all the knowledge and
> meaning necessary for the latter to understand, modify, enhance, or correct the
> program as needs be. If possible this would be a communication skill worth
> developing — might lead to more precise and accurate communication outside the
> world of the computer.

Literate programming is alive and well in modern software engineering
- it just isn't called that. Knuth's tools which involved a special
input language, a tool for converting that to compileable Pascal and
Latex for producing humane readable printouts of the code were
fantastic for the 1980s, but are rather dated for current software
development requirements.

In C++, one uses a tool called Doxygen, which parses standard C++
code, and produces HTML, Latex and other possibilities. The "dot"
network graphics tool is used to produce interactive UML diagrams of
the class structures, and source code is annotate with hyperlinks
allowing you to click on (say) a variable name, to find out what type
it is, where it is defined and so on. Plus, there is a huge amount of
doxygen markup features available, allowing things like embedded LaTeX
equations, or adding in crafted HTML links and so on. In short it does
everything Knuth's web tool did, and more, without the need to write
in an idiosyncratic source language.

When I come across a piece of unfamiliar code, the _first_ thing I do
is run doxygen on it, and then start reading the code using a web
browser. People are sometimes amazed at how quickly I find my way
around a new code base - when that happens, I let them in on my
superpower, ie doxygen.

Doxygen handles a number of programming environments, Java, C#,
Fortran even, though not Python nor Javascript alas. Other
environments have similar tools, of greater or lesser power: eg Java
has Javadoc (which is broadly compatible with Doxygen, in fact).

Knuth should be commended for being 30 years ahead of his time with
literate programming, and should be glad the industry does finally
"get it", even if his contribution is largely forgotten, and not
acknowledged by the hordes of software engineers currently practising.


--

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr Russell Standish                    Phone [phone] (mobile)
Principal, High Performance Coders     [hidden email]
                      http://www.hpcoders.com.au
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

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