[4644] in cryptography@c2.net mail archive
Re: FW: FW: Bernstein Opinion Up
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Matt Blaze)
Fri May 7 20:05:08 1999
To: "Karl A. Siil" <karl@invengen.com>
Cc: cryptography@c2.net
In-reply-to: Your message of "Fri, 07 May 1999 15:44:25 EDT."
<3.0.5.32.19990507154425.0095ea10@bic.invengen.com>
Date: Fri, 07 May 1999 17:29:18 -0400
From: Matt Blaze <mab@crypto.com>
Hi Karl,
>
>>Source code is simply the only effective way to express some programming idea
s,
>>and you cannot separate out its function from its expression, as you might be
>>able to do with pottery.
>
>I wouldn't say software is the only way; perhaps the simplest way.
>Hideous or not, I assert that any programming idea can be expressed as,
>e.g., flow-charts
While that may be true in some mathematical sense (after all, compilers
convert source code to other representations), I argued in my
declaration for the Bernstein case that source code is the way we are
trained, and expect others to, communicate certain ideas. Some concepts
as simply too cumbersome to express any other way in practice. As
an exercise, try to explain "Duff's Device" without resorting to
an actual, working, example.
-matt
