Re: non-consecutive ranges

[bglbv@my-dejanews.com]

Ehud Lamm <mslamm@mscc.huji.ac.il> writes:

> We can connect this to the idea of abstraction in general. Great
> scientists are usually regarded to be those that aside from using various
> scientific abstractions (like differntial equations, newtonian mechanics,
> thermodynamics etc.), grasp the inner details - thus knowing when things
> are applicable and when they are not and the theory etc. needs to be
> modified.

No, that's just the definition of a _competent_ scientist. To qualify
as great, a scientist must also have had at least two good original ideas
in his/her career. [Bad ideas don't count, as one tends not to keep track
of their originality.]

Back to programming: a competent programmer also needs some understanding
of the underlying details. In order to successfully use floating point
arithmetic, you need to know about rounding and about the fact that
not all real numbers are representable. If you want to write efficient
code, you need to know both about the properties of the algorithms
that apply to your problem and about existing constraints on how
various features of your programming language are implemented.
The role of abstraction isn't to let us permanently forget the
details, but rather to help us keep the interdependencies between the
various parts of a large program at a manageable level.