Weighing In: On Philo vs. CompSci

Out of allegiance to Russell/Whitehead and other Oxbridge proteges, the Philosophy Department disses practical in-the-field logical languages as impure, too messy, even when the underlying paradigm is pretty darned clear, and even when philosophers such as Leibniz already got it that we were aiming for machine-level implementations.

Basically, I think computer scientists earn a more honest living than most academician philosophers, and use Wittgenstein as a bridge, to try sharing the workload a little more fairly.

Put another way, I'm fighting academic logicians and their undeserved superiority complex, when it comes to what's "pure" (e.g. "math is too pure to sully with actual programming, yech" -- I find such rhetoric dismaying and feel sorry for the students they use it on).

This attitude relates to our disagreements on what's at the foundations of mathematics. They say it's controlled by The Cathedral (some inner circle, secretively chosen few), I say by The Bazaar (by ordinary people, managing as best they can -- open source collaboration is not a new winning strategy).

[ the above reposted to wittgenstein-dialognet, Yahoo eGroup, #6284 ]

Related writing: Some thoughts about testing (aka quality assurance) @ Math Forum (Drexel University).