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Philosophies and Programming Languages
evariste.galois writes "Wikipedia has a special section called, 'Language Philosophy,' in every article for a programming language. This section looks at the motivation and the basic principles of the language design. What if we investigate further than that? What deeper connections between philosophies and programming languages exist? By considering the most influential thinkers of all time (e.g. Plato, Descartes, Kant) we can figure out which programming language fits best with aspects of their philosophy (Did you know that Kant was the first Python programmer)? The list is not exhaustive, but this is a funny and educative start."
ergo sum
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
No wonder I Kant get anything done in Python!!!
*looks around and sees no one laughing*
*quietly backs off of the stage*
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
use Python.
This read more like a 'If programming language X was a car then it would be a Y' type lists.
Good for a brief chuckle, but not particularly enlightening.
Before we start this discussion, everyone should read the Tractatus Logico-philosophicus by Ludwig Wittgenstein. Programming languages, like human languages, express rules and patterns, but in philosophy we talk about how and when to employ rules, where to look for patterns. There are certainly general principles that apply to all programming languages, such as the trade-off between clarity and concision, whether it's better to own or reference an object in a given instance, etc. But does C++ really have a different "philosophy" than Objective-C, or are we just talking about the problem-solving intent and domain of the language and its suitability to a given problem? Do those really constitute philosophy, or are they just functional artifacts of the form?
Discuss.
-- thinkyhead software and media
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/, has an introduction on philosophy of computer science which is far more interesting than this worthless drivel.
Through my (admittedly limited) experience with updating another team's perl scripts, I've discovered the design philosophy of perl:
Schrodinger would like to disagree/agree with you.
As a programmer who was a philosophy major in college I am so happy to finally see the connection made by others (even if at such a superficial and shallow level).
In all seriousness, however, philosophy and programming are amazingly similar. They each are about breaking down complex thoughts into atomic, logical pieces. The origin of computer theory is in philosophy.
And for all of you philosophy majors who are sick of being asked what you are going to do with a philosophy degree (as I was).... tell them you will be a computer programmer!
Computer Science is already grounded in Philosophy, especially in Artificial Intelligence. Have a look at Defeasible Logic (based on defeasible reasoning) for some recent developments. If you want specific programming languages, have a look at Prolog. Search for theorem solvers online. Or check wikipedia for Logic programming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logic_programming. For that matter, have a look at the Turing machine http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turing_machine. Bottom line, the field of Computer Science is based on logic.
Jack Handy.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Lisp.
Alternately a convoluted, confusing and maddening knot of junk, and a transcending work of crystalline insight, clarity and genius, and either way, constantly leaving you with the nagging feeling that if you'd just went through it one more time with love and care, you'd finally, truly get what it's all about.
Machiavelli must have been the inspiration for Scheme.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
Programming languages are layers that abstract away the computer underneath. Philosophy is about pealing the layers that abstract away our being that lies underneath.
Of course, we know everything about a computer, because we built it. Yet we know nothing about our being, even when we're all trapped in one.
That could be our biggest weakness when the droids turn against us. Computers and machines will always know exactly what they are, while humans will forever be confused.
I thought he was a real pissant who was rarely very stable.
From TFA:
"Java was the first strongly-typed language, in which everything must have a type (or share a Form) before it is being used"
The author obviously doesn't know Pascal. Not only does everything in Pascal have a type, and must be declared as such, Pascal doesn't even have the concept of a typecast. And much less implicit conversions than Java (the only way to get from a real to an integer is through a function like round or trunc). In Pascal, an array of 5 integers is a different type than an array of 6 integers (actually, you don't give a number, but a type for indexing, which may be an integer subrange type like 0..4, but might as well be e.g. an enumeration type).
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Yes there is. The author's saying assembly defines everything explicitly; it's higher level languages that "beg for a question" about where that came from or how that works. Following his logic assembly doesn't "beg for a question" at all, but rather the opposite.
Socrates - ADA (he used his logical skills to help the aristocrats gain power, the real reason he was executed.) .NET languages. (Stuff pinched from everywhere and turned into an immense framework)
Plato - Java. (He believed in abstract objects but only had single inheritance)
Aristotle - SQL (he tried to systematise and arrange everything)
Aquinas -
Hegel - C++. (Hegel surely wrote the first write-only philosophical language)
Descartes - Visual Basic (if you can make a picture of it, it must be right)
Pascal - Prolog.
Ada, Lady Lovelace - Lisp.
Bertrand Russell - Erlang or Haskell
Ludwig Wittgenstein - PL/1
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
If you're serious about the topic, someone above mentioned Wittgenstein. The Saphir-Worf hypothesis is basic reading for linguistics. Here is a paper called "Notation as a Tool of Thought" written by a guy called Kenneth Iverson that discusses the effect that computer languages have on expression of thought.
Blithering about Kant being the first Python programmer and other such vacant nonsense may be entertaining in a limited way, but there are serious and fascinating issues in the study of linguistics, including those dealing with artificial language.
True. I further congratulate you in advance for being the only person I've met who got or may have gotten exactly what was wrong with the rave literary reviews for Forest Gump - and if you read it and saw the movie, why the movie was superior in all of the ways that the book sucked donkey balls.
Tien - I point out the event where Rousseau was overwhelmed with Voltaire, and frustrated by him, that he sent ruffians to beat him senseless in a dark alley, admonishing them to not do too much damage to Voltaire's head, as some good may yet come from it.
And Rousseau did endlessly parrot the best of all possible worlds meme. Perhaps my classical education was erroneous, but I was taught that it was Rousseau's clever and beautiful defense of the best outcome of the Lisbon earthquake that finally drove Voltaire over the edge.
Given those things and given that Leibniz would have been the better programmer, and given the many hundreds of thousands of lines of FORTRAN II and IV code I've seen - I still contend that the FORTRAN / FORTRAN IV programmer of prolific note is that monkey-see, monkey-do philosopher, Rousseau. Perhaps Leibniz did write a few dozen decent lines of it for him to proliferate...
Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.