[pantaloony]

You’re not alone. My brain works in steps, not proofs. If all code looked like Haskell and friends I doubt I’d ever have gotten into it in the first place.

[edit] algos, over proofs, would probably be a better way to put it.

[vvv312]

Proofs work in steps too.

I can never tell what an index-juggling loop is doing, in whatever language (including Scheme).

But when you follow the data type case by case, each step is simple and logical, easy to comprehend so the whole solution is easy too.

[pantaloony]

Sure, which is why I edited that “algorithms” is more accurate. When I read proofs I have to go through each step and figure out what every term on either side “does” to something “going through” it to make sense of it. I’d rather have my sandwich-making instructions as instructions than a series of statements about how the sandwich looks at each stage that I have to go back and turn into instructions to actually do anything with it, if that makes sense.

I get that other people don’t have this preference, but I strongly do. Test results indicate I should be incredibly well suited to mathematical work but I feel the way I imagine a dyslexic must when I try to read math or “mathy” programming languages. Give me something more-or-less procedural and I’m totally happy (though I gather I had a much easier time understanding and getting comfortable with recursion than many people do, which seems weird given I find the languages most heavily associated with it almost unreadable).

[agumonkey]

proofs to me, are 'typed' steps. you explicitely state the domains