Home Original page

Don't you just love writing this sort of thing :)

Stefan Behnel stefan_ml at behnel.de
Sun Dec 7 02:51:11 EST 2008 
Lawrence D'Oliveiro wrote:
> In message <m24p1h8vx5.fsf at googlemail.com>, Arnaud Delobelle wrote:
> 
>>   * you seem to disregard the fact that in 'programming language' there
>>     is the word 'language'.  A language is a way to _communicate_
>>     information, in the case of a programming language you communicate
>>     it to the computer but also to other human beings.
> 
> It was Niklaus Wirth, I think who pointed out that programming languages are
> not properly "languages" but are actually "notations". Like mathematics is
> a notation.
> 
> And mathematics, too, is a predominantly functional, not a procedural,
> notation. Could that be why so many people are frightened of functional
> constructs, like my code example and things like lambdas? Because they look
> too much like mathematics?

That's not the impression I got from reading this thread.

Stefan
More information about the Python-list mailing list