Python is readable
Steve Howell
showell30 at yahoo.com
Fri Mar 30 12:02:38 EDT 2012
On Mar 30, 3:47 am, Steven D'Aprano <steve
+comp.lang.pyt... at pearwood.info> wrote:
> If you are being paid to build abstractions in the ivory tower, on the
> chance that one in a thousand abstractions turns out to be a game
> changer, or just because of a love of pure knowledge, that's great. I
> love abstract mathematics too. I read maths in my free time, you won't
> find me saying that it is bad or useless or harmful. But does it solve
> real problems?
>
> Well, of course it does, and often in a most surprising places. But
> that's because out of the hundred thousand abstractions, we see the
> hundred that actually solve concrete problems. The other 99,999 exist
> only in forgotten journals, or perhaps the odd book here or there.
>
Steven, how do you predict which abstractions are going to be useless?
There was a time when imaginary numbers were just little toys that the
mathematicians played around with in their ivory towers. I mean,
really, what possible use could we have for the square root of -1,
other than to entertain mathematicians avoiding "real" problems?
Now the complex number plane helps us do 3-D math (air traffic
control), circuit design (radios, computers), and frequency analysis
(telecommunication).
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