On Wednesday, March 5, 2014 2:10:18 AM UTC-6, Andrew Barnert wrote:The types you dislike are not programming concepts that get in the way of human mathematics, they are human mathematical concepts. The integers, the rationals, and the reals all behave differently. And they're not the only types of numbers—Python handles complex numbers natively, and it's very easy to extend it with, say, quaternions or even arbitrary matrices that act like numbers.
hi Andrew, your response reminds me of that scene from 'Star Trek: First Contact,'
when Data was getting a little lippy with her eminence The Borg (the one who is many)
(he was trying to explain to her why she doesn't exist, since her ship was destroyed
just after coming through the chronometric particle vortex--time travel--) and she
responded, "You think so three dimensionally... "
When asked about the Borg hierarchy she stated simply, "You imply disparity where none exists..."
Now, that was one hot cybernetic babe. My point is philosophical, really. I do not dislike
numerical types. I simply do not believe they are necessary. In fact, Rexx (in a simple way)
and other languages too for that matter, have demonstrated that types are superficial paradigms in
symbolic thought that can quite readily be eliminated for most AI applications given enough
memory, and enough time. Fortunately, memory is becoming more plentiful (less expensive)
and time is shrinking away through processor speed, pipe-lining, and software engineering
like decimal.Decimal.
Keep in mind that I am NOT proposing the elimination of numbers, I am proposing the
abstraction of python numbers (yes, all of them...) in such a way that programmers and
specialists, and accountants and grade school teachers may use Python without having
to be computer scientists (all of the work happens under the covers, written by someone
like me, or you) and everything at the top is simple and human readable; for them.
Yes, its work. And, its doable. A number should be no more convoluted in a modern age
of symbol set processing than any other abstract idea (just because of arbitrary limits
and abstraction paradigms). Unifying python numbers requires a high order paradigm
shift for sure; but the concept is absolutely doable.
kind regards,