> [...] in a dynamic language so that we have no type annotation.
We're talking about type theory and you took the escape hatch.
> Let's say I named the argument "pair_of_ints". Following your logic, [...]
You spoke of conciseness, that's the logic you introduced, not hers.
> It's not good, however, to name the functions (let's add: in global scope) f, g, h, f2, f3, gh, etc. just to avoid typing more characters. Instead, we choose a name which can be understood with as little additional context as possible.
That's perfectly reasonable to expect programmers to use long enough, meaningful names in a complex program. But here the topic is type theory, which are made at most of a few dozen rules (unless you already want to tackle on a complex type system, but that would be like trying to learn how to drive on an indycar). In such a setting, long comprehensive words are not really needed.
If you allow me to transpose this issue of yours to your domain, software engineering newcomers might see this arcane notation of using brackets everywhere quite confusing. Why not simply use plain English to describe a program?
> Yes. My problem is when all the entries in the vocabulary are one (Unicode) character long.
It's not so bad, why limit yourself to 52 characters when you can have so many more to choose from? Korean has more than 20 different characters for vowels alone (luckily they don't have capital letters), Japanese has 2000 kanjis to convey meaning, not counting the (200 or so) kanas used for spelling and connecting words. Chinese has 10k symbols in everyday use, and so many more obscure ones.
The good thing about these Unicode characters is that they have a short notation, but a long pronunciation, a bit like the spelling alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, ...).
I guess that my point is: English speakers have it easy at the morphological level, learning a few more character cannot be that difficult.
> The latter, preferably. If something is meant to denote a context, I see little reason to name it "Γ" instead of, I don't know, "context"?
If there's only one context being considered, one might as well use Gamma (that letter corresponds to C in the roman alphabet, btw). Perhaps the hidden secret of all this discussion is that Type Theory is more a math subject than an engineering one. Of course at some point a type system has to cross this boundary to be implemented, but that doesn't mean that math people have to speak pseudo-code.
> Yes, but then I wouldn't need to work to understand the syntax.
Math uses Greek letters by tradition, perhaps because the first occidental ones where Greek? As for the horizontal bar to separate the premises from the conclusion, it's an inheritance from Gentzen notation for natural deduction (iirc). Obviously, our knowledge builds up incrementally from former discoveries/inventions, because (at the risk of this discussion to become absurd) how would you be able to extend something if you have to start from scratch every time? Conversely, what would be the point of using a different language once you've done the effort of learning the one used all through the literature?
Sometimes things do change however. A few centuries ago, scientific articles were still written in Latin, or sometimes French. In a sense, it has to be a step up in the right direction for native English speakers now that papers are in English (for those devoted to an international readership at least), perhaps not so much for Latinists and French speakers though. Maybe someone like you will do the extra effort of learning the old way, and push for a new way without the fancy typography? But you'd probably have to publish significant papers for that.
We're talking about type theory and you took the escape hatch.
> Let's say I named the argument "pair_of_ints". Following your logic, [...]
You spoke of conciseness, that's the logic you introduced, not hers.
> It's not good, however, to name the functions (let's add: in global scope) f, g, h, f2, f3, gh, etc. just to avoid typing more characters. Instead, we choose a name which can be understood with as little additional context as possible.
That's perfectly reasonable to expect programmers to use long enough, meaningful names in a complex program. But here the topic is type theory, which are made at most of a few dozen rules (unless you already want to tackle on a complex type system, but that would be like trying to learn how to drive on an indycar). In such a setting, long comprehensive words are not really needed.
If you allow me to transpose this issue of yours to your domain, software engineering newcomers might see this arcane notation of using brackets everywhere quite confusing. Why not simply use plain English to describe a program?
> Yes. My problem is when all the entries in the vocabulary are one (Unicode) character long.
It's not so bad, why limit yourself to 52 characters when you can have so many more to choose from? Korean has more than 20 different characters for vowels alone (luckily they don't have capital letters), Japanese has 2000 kanjis to convey meaning, not counting the (200 or so) kanas used for spelling and connecting words. Chinese has 10k symbols in everyday use, and so many more obscure ones.
The good thing about these Unicode characters is that they have a short notation, but a long pronunciation, a bit like the spelling alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, ...).
I guess that my point is: English speakers have it easy at the morphological level, learning a few more character cannot be that difficult.
> The latter, preferably. If something is meant to denote a context, I see little reason to name it "Γ" instead of, I don't know, "context"?
If there's only one context being considered, one might as well use Gamma (that letter corresponds to C in the roman alphabet, btw). Perhaps the hidden secret of all this discussion is that Type Theory is more a math subject than an engineering one. Of course at some point a type system has to cross this boundary to be implemented, but that doesn't mean that math people have to speak pseudo-code.
> Yes, but then I wouldn't need to work to understand the syntax.
Math uses Greek letters by tradition, perhaps because the first occidental ones where Greek? As for the horizontal bar to separate the premises from the conclusion, it's an inheritance from Gentzen notation for natural deduction (iirc). Obviously, our knowledge builds up incrementally from former discoveries/inventions, because (at the risk of this discussion to become absurd) how would you be able to extend something if you have to start from scratch every time? Conversely, what would be the point of using a different language once you've done the effort of learning the one used all through the literature?
Sometimes things do change however. A few centuries ago, scientific articles were still written in Latin, or sometimes French. In a sense, it has to be a step up in the right direction for native English speakers now that papers are in English (for those devoted to an international readership at least), perhaps not so much for Latinists and French speakers though. Maybe someone like you will do the extra effort of learning the old way, and push for a new way without the fancy typography? But you'd probably have to publish significant papers for that.