On 15-10-2010 23:52, Orchid XP v8 wrote:
> Oh wow. 42 years later, it still exists:
>
> http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/ewd02xx/EWD215.PDF
>
> "Go to considered harmful."

also not the last paragraph in
http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/EWD/transcriptions/EWD13xx/EWD1308.html


> Well there we are. I have to say, not the most convincing description of
> the problem I've ever seen.

That may be because you know what happened next *and* were not living at 
that time. Sort of like blaming Darwin that he failed to acknowledge the 
ribosome as evidence for evolution.

> I also note, with some interest, what looks suspiciously like Haskell
> syntax, in a letter typed 42 years ago. Obviously it's not after
> Haskell, but rather whatever mathematical formalism Haskell borrowed the
> notation from. Still, interesting none the less...)

What syntax specifically?

I think (but I was not yet part of the scene then) that people were 
looking for good notation. They knew that programming and mathematics 
had a lot in common. Yet things that were obvious in von Neumann 
machines (assignments and control flow statements in particular) did not 
have a direct counterpart in maths.
A problem that is not entirely solved even today. Haskell and other 
languages try to deal with it by restriction to a a paradigm that is 
closer to math than the imperative way of thinking. The downside of that 
is that problems that are easier solved in another paradigm become more 
complicated. Perhaps there are also people working on extending maths to 
include time-dependent behaviour.
Fact is that we as humans solve problems using a lot of techniques. 
Choosing whatever seems appropriate at the time. That is why I think a 
good programmer needs to be familiar with at least three or four 
different languages.

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