I always forget what strict weak ordering means, but it’s quite simple, actually. My explanation is based on the Programming Conversation of last week and I hope this will help me remember the next time I hear about this. Let’s start with ordering. A relation is an ordering if it is transitive. ordering --> for all a, b, c: r(a, b) and r(b, c) => r(a, c) And now strict....
Steve Yegge wrote (and writes, again) about interesting stuff. Two of my favorite essays are written by him. One is about Compilers and why you should know them, the other about why it’s important that programmers learn mathematics. Read them both to better understand where I come from. I came to the conclusion that saying mathematics has nothing to do with programming, is like saying programming and software contain no patterns or structure....