On Wed, 25 May 2005, Timothy Murphy wrote:
> > Timothy, would you say that the Roman numeral system (i.e. II + II = IV)
> > is a good first notation for teaching somebody arithmetic?
>> No, it's not a good first notation because nobody uses it,
> which is exactly my point.
Irrelevant! It is an *objectively* lousy notation for *doing* anything.
Just because *everybody* in Rome did it doesn't make it non-lousy.
> It's pretty obvious the decimal system is not the best notation -
> logically, hexadecimal would be much better.
Stop! I'm *not* talking about the "best" notation - there's room for
lots of debate about that. I'm explicitly saying that Roman notation
is/was *bad*.
> But since one normally learns to count in order to count,
> it is better to learn the system that everyone uses.
But since everyone normally learns to use an operating system in order to
use an operating system, it is better to learn the system that everyone
uses.
Ummm.. No?
>> In my view, people should be taught programming in order to write programs
> which hopefully do something interesting
> like deleting advertisements from TV programs.
That's a very, very limited view.
Ronan
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