Re: code portability

Walter Roberson wrote:
<websnarf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Chris Torek wrote:
In article <1154758023.486934.32470@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
<websnarf@xxxxxxxxx> wrote (replying to someone else):
A Ring is a set with a 0, a + operator and a * operator. And the point
is that its completely *closed* under these operations.

This is ... hardly a thorough definition.

I didn't claim it was. This isn't a classroom; thoroughness is not the
same as correctness.

You gave a definition for ring,

I did? Look. Pay attention:

A cat is an animal with fur, four legs and whiskers.

Is that a definition? It was my intent just to give sufficient
properties of a ring to explain why Keith's notion of what a ring is is
just not going to cut it.

[...] but there are sets that match your
definition that are NOT rings, because your definition was incomplete
even for common types of rings.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Ring.html

Right -- so you wanted me to paste that whole thing in here? I know
what the definition is, but as you can clearly see, its quite wordy
relative to what its actual content is. I could paste in Russell and
Whitehead's proof that 2+2=4 (although the metamath proof appears to be
much shorter) every time I cite that, but I don't think that it would
be very useful to this audience.

It is not clear to me how someone can complain about someone
else's "bizarre relationship to technical terms" and then themselves
misuse a technical term that they themself have indicated is important
to part of their discussion.

How did I misuse it?

--
Paul Hsieh
http://www.pobox.com/~qed/
http://bstring.sf.net/

.