Hi Terry,
At 08:38 PM 2/28/2010, you wrote:
I am lucky to have an adjunct teaching job at RIT teaching xml and
xsl and started to think about the questions they might ask me about
why do we use *,+,? and wondered if there was some really good
answer rather than the operators result in a closed set.
My answer would be simply that they are mathematically well defined,
have been demonstrated to be useful (striking a balance between
complexity and capability), and consequently are widely understood
among developers.
I'd leave the deeper points to the followup questions. In my work --
note that I frequently find myself teaching to students who don't
have CS or even computer programming backgrounds -- I find that these
can lead in any number of directions. (At least in an academic
context. And indeed, not having a CS background or even being a
"programmer" myself, I'm happy to point them to resources in logic or
CS if that's where they want to go, or if not to keep to fields where
I feel more at home, such as semiotics or media theory.)
Cheers,
Wendell
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Wendell Piez
mailto:wapiez(_at_)mulberrytech(_dot_)com
Mulberry Technologies, Inc. http://www.mulberrytech.com
17 West Jefferson Street Direct Phone: 301/315-9635
Suite 207 Phone: 301/315-9631
Rockville, MD 20850 Fax: 301/315-8285
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Mulberry Technologies: A Consultancy Specializing in SGML and XML
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