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Comment by automatoney | Hacker News Reader

This would be a really good (and much more accessible than the linked pdf) explanation without the condescending tone. This is some pretty advanced math, and pretending otherwise isn't constructive. If someone says "I'm having trouble understanding this", it's not their fault, and it's generally not laziness - it just means that the explanation isn't suited to them.

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It's not any kind of advanced math at all! The quoted fragment above is just a line of computer code. Anyone who has done any programming in any typed language should be easily able to understand it, though they may need to look up the syntax.

Nope, not me. But I've only been programming for 40 years, so maybe I'll get it when I've got more experience.

In other words, baloney. If you don't do that kind of programming, that stuff is very opaque. I might be able to get it if I were willing to stare at it for another 15 minutes, but I'm not willing.

15 minutes is not a long time. Easily understand doesn't mean instantly understand with no background reading.

You're just ignoring what he is saying.

What part am I ignoring?

> In other words, baloney. If you don't do that kind of programming, that stuff is very opaque.

That part.

Well, I interpret that as the assertion that it's more opaque than other types of programming. But I disagree and think that it is actually simpler in terms of the syntax and amount of prior understanding required. My blunt reply is that to assert that a particular example is inaccessible but then only to have dedicated 15 minutes to prove so is silly. I'm sure most people who seem to suggest that this stuff is opaque had no problem learning PCRE or complicated SQL joins and also didn't complain that it took more than 15 minutes to do so. Of course TT is a deep field and there are many complicated parts of it, but the syntax, rules and the example given are not opaque and very understandable to anyone who can tackle languages and abstraction.

Okay then. Please give some links to the following.

– Lambda calculus tutorial that gets you up to what you need to understand the referenced paper in 15 minutes

- A description of Hoare notation that I can also understand to adequate depth to understand the referenced paper, also in 15 minutes

- A description of classical logic etc. etc. 15 minutes

- A description of intuitionistic logic etc. etc. 15 minutes (presumably in how it differs from classical)

These would be very useful. If you can also explain them in a way that would allow me to use the information I've learnt in an hour to do something useful with programs like represent them, transform them, verify them against a specification, I would gladly spend a couple of weeks or a month doing that, genuinely.

If you can't do any of these things, please stop posting how easy it all is

Mate, the point I was making is that 15 minutes is not a reasonable time frame to learn new programming concepts in.

You're right, I should read more carefully. Nonetheless, my point still stands, if you can give me some resources to learn these things, with considerably more than 15 minutes allowed, and bearing in mind I have no one to ask when I get stuck, and at my end aim is to actually use these things rather than treat them as interesting (which I already find them so) then I'd be grateful.

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