Laura's List - was Re: new years resolutions

[Michele Simionato]

Andrew McGregor <andrew at indranet.co.nz> wrote in message news:<mailman.1041999800.30291.python-list at python.org>...
> You can see the same thing in physics; contrast the notation of classical 
> mechanics with the operator algebra formulation of QM.  Or even the 
> classical vs relativistic notations for relativistic EM.
> 
> I think the driving force is that a clean design takes more typing in Perl, 
> whereas in Python it's usually much, much less.
> 
> Andrew

I understand you are saying "Python has a better syntax than Perl" 
and I have no problem with that. Then you pass to Physics examples and
I am a little confused. Yes, the covariant notation for Maxwell
equations is
better than the nonrelativistic one, but in which sense the
operatorial
formalism is better than classical mechanics formalism ? They are
interely
different field of Physics, they cannot be compared ! Even so, I do
not
understand if you find more elegant the classical or the quantum
notation,
to me they are equally nice in their respective domain of validity.
Of course,if I you speak of relativistic quantum fields, the best
notation
is the functional one.

I-hope-I-have-not-scared-non-physicist-readers-ly yours,

--
Michele Simionato - Dept. of Physics and Astronomy
210 Allen Hall Pittsburgh PA 15260 U.S.A.
Phone: 001-412-624-9041 Fax: 001-412-624-9163
Home-page: http://www.phyast.pitt.edu/~micheles/