Variables

[Jeremy Bowers]

On Sat, 23 Apr 2005 22:45:14 -0400, Richard Blackwood wrote:
> Indeed, this language is math. My friend says that foo is a constant and
> necessarily not a variable. If I had written foo = raw_input(), he would
> say that foo is a variable. Which is perfectly fine except that he insists
> that since programming came from math, the concept of variable is
> necessarily the identical.

"The" concept? *snort* Your friend knows not of what he speaks.

Ask him if parallel lines cross. Then ask him if he has any right to get
snotty about terminology like that.

If he hasn't got far enough into math to understand why that question is
relevant, then he hasn't got far enough into math to opine on what a
"variable" is, anyhow. (By the way, if he says "no", and not "it depends
on your axiom choice", the same is true.)

(By math, are we talking *real* math like number theory or set theory,
something involving proofs, or high-school algebra that deals in numbers
and mere arithmetic? I rather suspect the latter, in which case you may
tell your friend y'all are so far out of your league you can't even tell
how far out you are. Nobody who has studied number theory or alternate
geometries or anything like real math could have this conversation, unless
they *really* missed the point of, well, everything they've done up to
that point...)