Curvy Mathematics

Programming : Commanding a Language (17 Nov 2017)

 As we grow up, we learn to speak our mother language. We learn it by heart and we use it to communicate orally, until we go to school when we learn to write and everything is destroyed. New knowledge has penetrated. New kids on the block. We have to re-organise all we know and all we learn. Somehow it works. Many of us face some difficulties but in the end we manage to learn to properly speak and write our mother languages.

 A great, arising difficulty is the fact that our language has rules. Unfortunately, inequality governs the world we live in and as it happens with state laws, language rules have exceptions too. These exceptions show the difficulty a human mind finds to revolt against habit. We tend to like a habit as we suppose we become better when repeating and someone will admire us and applaud for us. Repetition is an advantage for learning but when it becomes a habit, then the line is crossed, it has already become a disadvantage.

 In the past, someone chose to defy a rule, either because he/she could not follow it or because he/she did not want to comply with it and his/her charismatic personality assisted in transferring the "mutation" to future generations, making it a habit. The language of chemistry, which I am familiar with, still uses names for substances which have remained the same since the age of alchemists.

 Several people are alleged to have a tendency in learning foreign languages. I suppose one should definitely learn the rules and the exceptions in order to comprehend and fluently speak any human language. There are some languages though that have no exceptions at all. Programming languages.

 The idea is simple. Each programming language has a list of pre-set words, a library of defined commands in other words, each of them executing a very specific task without any deviations. A combination of these commands may create an object, just like words create a sentence. The difference is that words may have more than one meaning which depend on the mood of the speaker or the author whereas commands have a strict and clear meaning allowing no doubt about it. Thus, sentences may be interpreted in more than one ways while objects cannot be misunderstood.

 Yet, people tend to face computer programming with some fear. Good command of a human language allows us to impress the others, to manipulate the language and show a virtual supremacy over the rest. Good command of a computer language just makes us faster in commanding a cold machine which will never applaud for us nor will it gaze at us in awe, admiring our knowledge and experience. And this flattens our vanity.

 Personally, I find it incredible that programming is actually a sequence of commands to add the number of times an electrical circuit is carrying electricity. It sounds so simple and it really is. Just imagine that computing is based on mathematics. Here comes the pain of mathematics again.

 Mathematics consists of a language too. A sequence of symbols which helps humanity to degrade a problem into adding units, find a solution according to mathematical rules without exceptions and re-apply the solution in our reality. The entire difficulty lies in translating to/from mathematics. To be honest, mathematics will help in commanding a programming language and each programming language will definitely assist in comprehending the simplicity of mathematics.

Moderator: Gauss, Overseers.