Re: Acronyms

Posted by Frank Wimberly-2 on Jan 26, 2021; 2:28am
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/Acronyms-tp7600393p7600417.html

I would not expect the compilers I have used (Algol, Fortran, Java, Lisp (interpreter), Pascal, C, C++) to produce the same result to the last bit for (x + 1)^2 and x^2 + 2x + 1.  Would you?

On Mon, Jan 25, 2021 at 7:18 PM jon zingale <[hidden email]> wrote:

Nick ,

Please pardon a second attempt to address your question. Let me grant your
definition of *rigor* as meaning *that which compiles*. *Clarity*, however,
I would like to treat differently. What strikes me as a structural
difference between *rigor* and *clarity* here is that the former (as
narrowly defined above) depends only on the property of being compilable.
Something, anything, was stated such that a program can run. The latter, to
my mind, would require a concept of two programs being equivalent (or at
least orderable). How else could we claim that one program was stated more
clearly than another? This equivalence can be shoddy as in an optimizing
function, ie. modulo some countable things I value, or actual equivalence.
Many computer languages do not allow for actual functional equivalence in
this sense, though there are some narrow examples. While you and I, and some
algebraically focused languages, can immediately tell that *adding 1 to x
and then squaring the result* is the "same thing" as *adding together a
squared x to two times x and a 1*, many languages would require checking
every value to determine such an equivalence. In this way, *clarity* appears
to me to require more structure than a notion of *rigor* does. To some
extent, I wish to reject the programmer/compiler dialectic, as it seems that
it hides more useable observations.



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