Want to take part in these discussions? Sign in if you have an account, or apply for one below
Vanilla 1.1.10 is a product of Lussumo. More Information: Documentation, Community Support.
Started sugaring.
Let’s add some cross-links. For instance we do have an entry “computer science”. And does it not just as well apply to formal logic more generally?
I don’t know about the scope of the term. I’ve only ever seen it in a computer science context, but maybe straight logicians use it. Anyone know?
People speak about “sugared set theory” and “sugared ZFC”. At least this guy here does frequently.
I think in fact the phrase is widespread, as in “syntactic sugar”. (John Baez also once used the phrase “semantic sugar” to me when he was trying to read something I had written.)
Heh, I’d forgotten about my so-called “challenge”. Not that the guy in question understood what I meant.
Ok, I’ll say “In computer science and more generally”. It certainly seems to have started there.
Added a further example: classes in a set theory like ZFC.
I would think a rather extreme example of syntactic sugaring outside of computer science would be Einstein_notation where things that look like exponents are just indices and what looks like a simple equation can be formally syntactically translated into more primitive syntax involving summation. (This convention seems to only be briefly mention in the nLab at matrix calculus.)
I’m not too happy about the linguistic example at sugaring as sugar because they are missing a formal translation, and any such translation would be in some sense be from syntax to semantics and wouldn’t be a syntactic translation (that is unless you believe that syntax is semantics.)
I’m not too happy about the linguistic example…
It’s probably too prominent an example on the page, but computer scientists do speak of sugaring into natural language. I don’t understand why you see it as a translation to semantics. The word ’syntax’ comes originally from grammarians studying natural language, e.g., things like verb-subject-object order. I should think this very much a case of translation from a formal syntax to a natural language syntax.
I’ve reorganised things to allow a list of examples. The natural language case can sink down the list.
Looking back at Landin’s original coinage, he’s wondering about the correspondence between the kinds of ’sum’ (i.e., calculation) posed in school exams and expressions in a formal system such as the -calculus. The former will often include natural language, ’Find a/b, where a=…, b=…’.
You can see why Ranta considers operations from type theory to natural language as sugaring. In his example he has three ways of rendering a dependent sum into natural language and hence nine ways to render a double sum.
I agree Einstein summation is a good example. It seems incredible we have so little on it. matrix calculus points to WIkipedia and Hamiltonian mechanics has it unlinked. Of course, this all ties into the string diagram renditions of the tensor calculus. So let’s start Einstein summation convention.
Added
1 to 12 of 12