On Tue, 3 Jul 2012 11:22:55 +1000 Chris Angelico <ros...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Jul 3, 2012 at 10:57 AM, Steven D'Aprano > <steve+comp.lang.pyt...@pearwood.info> wrote: > > > Perhaps the world would be better off if mathematicians threw out the > > existing precedence rules and replaced them with a strict left-to-right > > precedence. (Personally, I doubt it.) > > > > But until they do, consistency with mathematics is far more important > > than the foolish consistency of left-to-right precedence. > > And if they ever do, it'll break consistency with past centuries of > mathematical writing. Imagine (taking this to another realm) that it's > decided that since Wolfram is now called Tungsten, it should have the > chemical symbol 'T' instead of 'W'. This is far more consistent, > right? And Iron should be I, not Fe. We'll move Iodine to Io (and > Europium to Europa and Gallium to Ganymede?), and tritium (the isotope > of hydrogen) can become H3. It'd make today's chemistry notes look as > archaic and unreadable as those using alchemical symbols, only the > actual symbols are the same, making it ambiguous. Nope. Better to > stick with what's standardized. > I agree to some extent, but as a counter-example, when I was a child there a subject called "Weights and Measures" which is now redundant because of the Metric system. I don't miss hogsheads and fathoms at all. Music is another field which could do with a "metrification": I get tired of explaining to beginners why there's no B#, except when it's C. Check out http://musicnotation.org If legacy systems get too far out of sync with current practice, they become an unnecessary layer of complexity and a hurdle to understanding, and at some point you have to take the plunge, old books be damned. -- John -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
