Invited Talk - Guy Steele

12 comments from Hacker News

1. @JachMay 2020· in “Students are failing AP tests because the College Board can’t handle HEIC images”

   The context here isn't the average American, but a high school student taking an AP test involving writing math -- where scoring well counts for the same credit as having passed the equivalent entry level course(s) in college. Besides, math is already pseudo language on top of pseudo language. Learning notation is part of math, I'll concede learning to type an expression on a computer is a different notation than writing it with pen, but if you can't learn that, why learn math? Each domain does its own thing too and isn't even necessarily consistent. Guy Steele gave a great talk a few years ago on "Computer Science Metanotation", and that's just one area of math: this video (Edit: And to conclude here, learning to read and write with some notation tends to be easy, it's learning what the math actually means that is the hard part.)

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2. @amar-lakshJun 2022· in “Ask HN: How to get better knowledge about math notations in computer science”

   Excellent talk by Guy Steele explaining the history of maths/comp notations that can probably lead you to the right path through original sources: this video Then have a look at this extremely underrated talk by Alexander Stepanov for basically falling in love with maths (he gives a long view of maths in general adorned with beautiful commentary): [LINK]

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3. @earleybirdDec 2021· in “Mathematical Notation, Past and Future (2000)”

   For a deeper exposition on language and notation, Guy Steele[0] is the definitive authority :-) - with some discussion here[1]. [0] this video [1] [LINK]

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4. @JachOct 2018· in “Clojure at Netflix (2013) [slides]”

   You would probably enjoy this talk by Guy Steele where he discusses the language of mathematics that computer science people use in their papers (Computer Science Metanotation) to talk about other languages. Funnily it's untyped and lacking a rigorous specification... this video

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5. @dan-robertsonAug 2023· in “How should I read type system notation?”

   There was a Guy Steele talk a while ago on this topic. He also gives searchable names for some of the things (eg the ‘2d inference rule diagrams’). He calls it ‘computer science metanotation’, though I think it’s more of a PLT thing. this video

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