[seanmcdirmid]

Great abstractions are not always algebraic. Words and vocabulary are incredibly successful as abstractions, as are ontologies. In fact, an entire programming paradigm has been constructed around such abstractions and has been reasonably successful.

[wellpast]

Words and vocabulary aren’t enough. Not the colloquial/dictionary sense, at least.

So if we’re talking about “facts” in an “ontology” — these are still (they must be if they are going to be processed by a machine) concrete formalisms - that’s what I mean by algebras.

If we are not machine-processing these ontologies but just printing them out for users, then I don’t count that. Because we’re not really programming over those abstractions. We’re just giving them back to the humans.

[seanmcdirmid]

Instructing someone how to do something and the computer how to do it is basically the same thing. Yes, humans have more latitude in how they follow instructions, but the same skills ofnabsteaction are applied. The whole point about OOP is that you could still weild abstractions without being a mathematician.

Now, how often do people learn chess algebraically?