Re: [Patents] Software is not hardware, social sciences are not natural sciences.

[Bernard Lang <Bernard.Lang@inria.fr>]

On Mon, Mar 15, 2004 at 06:48:16PM +0100, Jonas Maebe wrote:
> 
> On 15 mrt 2004, at 18:28, Bernard Lang wrote:
> 
> >> Economics and software are two completely different beasts. Software 
> >> is
> >> merely a way to describe mathematical operations
> >
> > not necessarily ...  (e.g. equational programming)
> 
> Equational programming seems to be a form of functional programming.

No
  For example, it can express succintly forms of non-determinism.

No, ...  much in use where correctness (and proofs) matter.  But the
industry will take a long time to adopt it.
  Java is a technology that was more than 20 years old when it was
adopted (even though the language itself was of a recent design).

> (since you can create an interpreter for a functional language in a
> procedural language).

Turing arguments lead nowhere in this kind of discussion.  All
powerful computational models can simulate each other (this is called
Church's thesis).

The question is not what you can do, but what it is, how it allows you
to formulate things.

> So functional programming and equational programming are just 
> syntactical sugar

Not so ... the difference is that in equational programming, I only
have to state the problem, and ignore the process using them for the
problem at hand.

  For example, a grammar is set of equation that the computer can use
to tell whether a sentence belongs to a given set.  Many people use
it, and have no knowledge whatsoever of what goes on in the computer.

And there other forms of programming that describe data ... Style
sheets for example  (similar to equations in a sense).

> >> A description of something is not patentable subject matter,
> >
> > but what is described may be
> 
> That's why I said in my original mail:
> 
> "So the only thing left that's possibly patentable is what you 
> describe, but whether or not that's patentable is completely 
> independent from the way you describe it."

right ... I agree with the rest....

bernard


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