Why use Perl when we've got Python?!

[Kent Polk]

On Fri, 27 Aug 1999 15:33:04 +1000, Factory wrote:
>
>  Hmm that might be a bit off, the anchient Greeks had no concept of 
>variables, thus you would never see f(x)= 2y in any old greek 
>mathematics. IIRC variables were discovered(?) by Al-Jabar sometime 
>after.

I believe you are thinking of Al'Khwarizmi, who wrote the book
"Hisab al-jabr w'al-muqabala". 'Algebra' came from 'al-jabr' and
'Algorithm' came from the name Al'Khwarizmi. Later Greeks certainly
appear to have used the concept of variables, but did have not the
algebraic notation.