Darren New wrote:

> """
> The essence of a software entity is a construct of interlocking 
> concepts: data sets, relationships among data items, algorithms, and 
> invocations of functions. This essence is abstract in that such a 
> conceptual construct is the same under many different representations. 
> It is nonetheless highly precise and richly detailed.
> 
> I believe the hard part of building software to be the specification, 
> design, and testing of this conceptual construct, not the labor of 
> representing it and testing the fidelity of the representation. We still 
> make syntax errors, to be sure; but they are fuzz compared with the 
> conceptual errors in most systems.
> """
> 
> "Fundamental" means basic or essential.
> "Difficult" means requiring great physical or mental effort to 
> accomplish or comprehend.
> 
> So, yeah. If you actually study this stuff, you realize why programming 
> (amongst many other fields of endeavor) is fundamentally difficult.
> 

I fear my criterion for "difficult" rather subjective, something like: 
If I can do it, it's really
not all that difficult. :)

Of course applying words like "hard" or "difficult" to things like
"programming" or "applied mathematics" is misleading since some things 
included
within these"subjects" may be easy, some hard, some extremely hard.

David :)

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