Feynman: 'Greek' versus 'Babylonian' mathematics

What people said

asgard1024 · 2015-09 · Recommendation

> What is simple and clear about Python? .. it's really a pretty complex language with a deep ecosystem Here's a helpful video from Feynman that kinda explains it: [VIDEO] Python language (ditto Perl, Ruby..) uses Babylonian approach, while the languages with more fundamental building blocks (like say Scheme, Haskell..) are more like Greek approach. So Python it is not simpler as a language per se, but it is simpler to mold onto the problem. At least that's my explanation why people (myself included) like to use it, despite well understanding there are more elegant (mathematically) languages out there.

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nerd_stuff · 2015-09 · Recommendation

Here's the part of the lecture mentioned in the article: [VIDEO] Feynman was an excellent communicator, it's rare that having an intermediary "explain" what he was saying adds more than it takes away.

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throwaway71271 · 2023-08 · Reference

By linear I did not mean the order in which you study, but rather how your understanding builds up, as in, how much time you put in, and how much you grow. For example if your native language is subject verb object (cows eat grass) it is quite linear to learn subject object verb (cows grass eat) languages (e.g. Japanese), you put in time, and you make progress. There are other subjects where when you get stuck you cant move on, and the pedagogy and androgogy systems we have came up with for math/physics and etc are getting better and better to understand what people don't understand and how to move them further. Which on its own is quite problematic when you have a class of 30 kids and you are moving with the 'average' kid which does not exist. In the same time, programming is fairly new, and teaching it is still evolving, educators still disagree on what is important and in which order (reminds me a bit of this Feynman video about 'Greek' versus 'Babylonian' mathematics [VIDEO] ) There was a great example someone used, the amount of people who get confused by the equal sign, and some actually never go through understanding references and values for many years: x=5 y=x x=6 print(y) and a=[] b=a a.push(1) print(b) Now I am teaching my daughter and I spent about 3 days per week just on pointers and strings (We even made a card game we play from time to time [LINK] ), and I can see when she is stuck and what exactly she is stuck on, but how can you do that with 30 kids, when the

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