- From: Eric S. Raymond <esr@snark.thyrsus.com>
- Date: Sat, 19 Oct 1996 09:46:53 -0400 (EDT)
- To: Albert-Lunde@nwu.edu
- Cc: davidp@earthlink.net, www-html@w3.org
> > A fabulousity. Thoroughly orthogonal to the American Heritage > > dictionary definition: > > > > Mathematics. > > Relating to or composed of right angles. > > The jargon file quote is based on a much better mathematical definition. Jargon File editor speaking... The Jargon File definition was abstracted from usage prevalent among hackers and computer scientists as long as I've been in the field, which is 20 years. As an ex-mathematician, I knew when I added it in 1990 that mathematicians had been using it that way even longer. I strongly suspect that it has been well-established mathematical slang since Heaviside's popularization of vectorial methods around the turn of the 20th century, if not earlier. My impression is that this usage is not part of the production vocabulary in engineering fields outside of computing. However, it should be readily comprehensible (and rather appealing) to anyone with a math background including vector calculus or higher fields; therefore I would expect EEs, MechEs etc to hear it correctly even if they don't use it themselves. -- <a href="http://www.ccil.org/~esr/home.html">Eric S. Raymond</a>
Received on Saturday, 19 October 1996 09:43:32 UTC