User:JSory

Wikipage for J.A. Sory

I write numerical software.

On Algorithm Syntax: Or Why Writing in a Popular Language is a Disservice to Humanity

If one frequents wikipedia pages dedicated to algorithms one will find that the majority of them are written in a specific language, often with the justification that it makes the algorithm easier for other programmers to implement. This is an erroneous assessment for two reasons

1. It assumes that the reader would understand the programming language selected and properties exploited in the code
2. It assumes that the author wrote it correctly (generally false), and encourages copy-pasting potentially erroneous code

Instead what should be done is the algorithm should be written in a pseudocode that relies on formal mathematic definitions as much as possible. Even though mathematics does have variance in syntax, it is far less ambigious than programming languages.