I've always attributed the excellence in mathematics to the culture and their emphasis on schooling. I have many Asian friends who grew up not knowing the language but with strict parents from these backgrounds. All of them perform above par in math, as well as school in general. Perhaps it is the language, but I have yet to see personal evidence of it.
I have to wonder, does the English language offer any improvements? Obviously it's the language of choice for most technical and scientific ventures. Is this simply because it became popular and stayed popular?
Programming languages aren't explicit executable forms, they are abstractions. Unless you are working with machine code or assembly, you're getting the abstract ideas which get expanded by the compiler. What it sounds like you're advocating is to write out 3+3+3+3+3 instead of 3*5 (the latter is assuming).
Completely agree with you, but from your experience, how many fewer do both very well? I have always been interested in both and I can't imagine having one tool without the other, as they both enhance the way that I think about things. Programming makes the concepts of variables and sigma notation even easier to understand, while math makes it far easier to solve problems. Do people actually get by in programming without math?
Hungarian notation for formulas would be terrible. It would make it that much harder to memorize, as well as increase the difficulty of seeing patterns between various formulas.
The real problem here is trying to force programming notation into mathematics notation. Programming variables emphasize what you're working with while mathematics variables emphasize ideas and relationships.
I had a similar experience switching from Java taught in college to self-teaching lisp. I essentially had to relearn everything that I knew and start looking at lisp as an entirely different beast, as most pattern matching that I did between the two came back to be wrong.
Apart from the basics, things like the CLOS definitely threw me for a spin, since it uses a different model for its object system.
Overall, probably best to approach most of the languages mentioned as a new way of thinking.
I agree that other factors would prevent students having too much power, but "good" is a very subjective term. Even "effective" depends on how the students learn. Just because I think a teacher is good for challenging me, another student might hate them for being so tough.
A lot of kids mature enough to go to scientific/programming camps are usually the ones mature enough to understand that they learn under guidelines. Also, those kids aren't being graded.
As a recent high schooler, I've seen kids who absolutely hated their teachers because they gave them bad grades because they challenge their students. However, this specific teacher was probably the most influential for those who appreciated him.
I'm just afraid that the majority will figure out the system and use it as a weapon, as was mentioned.
"It will thus have to wait until we can make
another major release."
It is said in the part about breaking API that it will just have to wait unless someone wants to pay him for the development fix or for him to make a fix worthy of the stable updates.
The PHP site doesn't need a massive facelift, but honestly, this is actually a bit of a problem. The site is basically just a hosting of the resources already, why not make it easier to find things from inside the site?
People who aren't serious don't really matter, unless they become serious. The new design will alienate people who had gotten used to it and enjoyed that it was easy to find the resources they needed. Also, any language not already attracting new users probably won't have many incentives for keeping them around (I'm thinking of lisp with its scary parentheses).
Being fairly new to programming myself, I've actually noticed that the most powerful languages usually have websites with terrible aesthetics. It usually means that instead of worrying about how the site looks, most of the people involved are solving problems with the language. The only changes come when usability is hindered.
I have to wonder, does the English language offer any improvements? Obviously it's the language of choice for most technical and scientific ventures. Is this simply because it became popular and stayed popular?