Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> I don't know. There are things you *must* know if you hope to write 
> nontrivial programs and expect them to work properly. And there are 
> other things which are useful to know, but generally not vital. I'd say 
> all of the above fall definitely into the range of "it's great if you 
> know it, but it's really not *required*".

You don't need to know algebra to know how to write a program? You don't 
need to know how "and" and "or" works to write a program?

You can't understand what a compiler does without knowing any abstract 
algebra. Heck, you can't even know the difference between a literal and an 
expression without knowing abstract algebra. You realize that "pass by 
value" is abstract algebra, right?

How do you know if your while loop terminates if you don't know how 
predicate calculus works?

Actually, I think the answer is more that you know these things, and you 
just don't know the terminology the academics use for much of the stuff.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   Why is there a chainsaw in DOOM?
   There aren't any trees on Mars.

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