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by shoefly 3502 days ago
We should rephrase the question as "why don't computer scientists learn traditional math symbols?"

Try writing traditional equations with your keyboard. Try posting your answer online. Modern computer science breaks down these symbols into plain english.

2 comments

we do have math typesetting you know... With a standard programming language for typesetting handled by all major browsers. Just head over to Mathoverflow and see it in action
Also, when writing code it's not unusual (at least among LISP and Haskell programmers) to have the editor replace a word for its corresponding symbol, the most famous example of which is (lambda -> λ) because some people find it easier to parse e.g. in emacs[0]. You can easily imagine doing that for other expressions, like (forall, there-exists, ...etc).

All in all I think it's a matter of preference which is in turn related to each individual's experiences.

[0] https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/PrettyLambda

Indeed, Slack has native support for ~2k emojis, but not basic math symbols. It's clearly a matter of priorities, not feasibility.
Seems like a deficiency with computers, not humans or math. Fix it.