sas@BFLY-VAX.BBN.COM.UUCP (03/02/87)
Mr. Talmon misunderstood my argument. I did not come out against symbolic notation - I argued that mathematical and logical notation are not the appropriate symbolic notation for computer science. That is why I gave a series of examples showing that many fields have developed their own formalisms which are not variants of mathematical and logical notation. APL may look a lot like matrix algebra at first glance but it is decidedly procedural. Similarly, PROLOG may look like mathematical logic, but I don't recall Aristotle, Aquinas or Quine discussing anything even vaguely like 'cut'. I could base a programming language on chemical notation or architectural renderings, but understanding it would STILL require reasoning about procedural execution. Seth