The fact that the same symbolic programming primitives work for those as work for math kinds of things, I think, really validates the idea of symbolic programming being something pretty general.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
The most important precedents deal with the whole idea of symbolic programming - the notion of setting up symbolic expressions that can represent anything one wants, and then having functions that operate on both their structure and content.
Programming is usually taught by examples.
I think math is a hugely creative field, because there are some very well-defined operations that you have to work within. You are, in a sense, straightjacketed by the rules of the mathematics. But within that constrained environment, it's up to you what you do with the symbols.
Much of what I make is geometric, and has a kind of almost mathematical logic to the form.
In any architecture, there is an equity between the pragmatic function and the symbolic function.
One of the interesting applications of symbolic systems is artificial intelligence, and I spent some time thinking about how to create a brain that operates the way ours does.
I find languages that support just one programming paradigm constraining.
I regard it in fact as the great advantage of the mathematical technique that it allows us to describe, by means of algebraic equations, the general character of a pattern even where we are ignorant of the numerical values which will determine its particular manifestation.
Low-level programming is good for the programmer's soul.
Programming is one of the most difficult branches of applied mathematics; the poorer mathematicians had better remain pure mathematicians.