🚀 go-pugleaf

Ya'll are missing a fundamental point.  There are any number of anecdotes
to point out that language can be misleading - if not downright deadly.
Else propaganda will not work.  MORAL: beware relying on unevaluated language.

Up until *Grundlagen der Arithmetik* there was not the uniformity of
concept of language.  *Principia* tried to rectify this - giving rise
to logical positivism, with which we are stuck today. Note that the 
prime movers of positivism - Whitehead, Russel and Wittgenstien - all
gave up on it.  The strict separation of syntax and semantics is an artifact
of Noam Chomsky's view of linguistics.  Remember, Aristotle and all
logicians to Frege were interested in debate - a much different problem
than axiomatic deductive theories.

For those of you who are in love with things mathematical:
in my experience, mathematicians are the hardest people to teach programming.
They have not concept of evaluation. [For the record, I'm
a mathematician by training].  Another difficult
problem is that cultural imprinting is what leads to clarity and semantics
in most mathematics.  Besides, there are many idiomatic uses of notation
which are understood but not technically correct.

{Begin Heresy
	Mathematical notation and content evolved in support of the sciences.
	Please recall that Gauss - the Prince of Mathematics -was what
	we would call an astrophysicst today.  If you want to emulate
	mathematics, then support your equivalent of "the sciences."
End Heresy}-- 
Steve Stevenson                            fpst@hubcap.clemson.edu
(aka D. E. Stevenson),                     fpst@clemson.csnet
Department of Computer Science,            comp.parallel
Clemson University, Clemson, SC 29634-1906 (803)656-5880.mabell