Hacker News Reader

> P.S. Making general comments about "math notation" is pretty dishonest argument. The math I studied was all commutative diagrams and blobs to represent manifolds; very little "infix operators" as far as I could tell. Mathematicians in general are flexible with notation (and definitions!) and will normally default to whatever is the loose consensus in their field :)

It is exactly the point of what you are answering: mathematicians too use a flexible, ad-hoc notation. Presumably it is better for them. I don't see how it is dishonest, I find it quiet on point.

I guess it needs less ink/chalk, and gives more visual clue about the structure and the content of the equation, than a more uniform, lisp like notation would.

> But of course, baby duck syndrome will prevail and Minsky's comments are painfully true to this day: "Anyone can learn it [Lisp syntax] in a day, unless they know Fortran, in which case it's three days."

That’s hilarious, where did he say that?

I'm only finding the quote, no source. But here's something we can be sure he said:

> The complete syntax of LISP can be learned in an hour or so; the interpreter is compact and not exceedingly complicated, and students often can answer questions about the system by reading the interpreter program itself.

https://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/TuringLecture/Turin...

No need to throw offenses. See my cousin comment for an explanation.