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Feb 21, 2018

The "PL as Math" side always left me cold, same as arguing "Shakespeare is just words." I read Knuth's "Literate Programming" in college in the '90s, and ever after have thought of PL as language, as description, as communication, first and foremost.

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I dunno, perhaps that's because you get different connotations when you hear the word, 'Math', which is perfectly understandable. To me the word evokes ideas of structure, relationships, beauty, form, and creativity… the deep underpinnings of everything we know and love.

1:17 PM · Feb 22, 2018Twitter Web Client

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I got the "vibe" of SML, and later Haskell and Rust. Correctness and totality are good properties, but they're *cold*. They exist for the machine, not for the human, and PLs are really about humans. PL as language, as literature, as communication, as art - that matters more.

Brendan Zabarauskas

@brendanzab

Feb 22, 2018

I dunno, I find langs like Rust and Elm and Reason bending over backwards to help me express myself better and more clearly, where as others give me the silent treatment and never critique me until it's too late, then it's a big slap in the face… 😰

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The "math" view of PL is valid, and it has math's stark pure beauty, but it doesn't flow like storytelling or carry the emotion of dance and paint. Case in point: Nobody cares if your video game is correct. They only care if it's *fun*, and no amount of math can define "fun."