Care to show an example how the notion of infinity can make a programmer's job easier? Particularly in the field of Internet protocols and web applications.
This is akin to entering room room full of engineers and shouting "I can fly! Prove I can't!", what do you mean, prove you can.
Take any serious book on modeling bus and routing infrastructure (and not vocational guide on using protocols designed by someone else) and you will see plenty of partial differential equations.
Just one example please. Ideally, a theory based on which engineers built something, but not the other way around, i.e. when something exists and some theorists are trying to build a de facto model of it.
Edit: a theory that involves infinities.
Edit: I'd like to warn you though, that because I'm more or less familiar with the subject, I think it will be very difficult to find what I'm asking for.
Fourier Transform as applied to MRI. The underlying theory of Fourier Transforms involves integrating from -inf to inf. The transform is used to extract the underlying waveforms from the signal received by the MRI machine.
Since the MRI machine only samples the signal coming in it uses a DFT, but that doesn't negate the fact that the theory of Fourier Transforms involves the notion of infinity and that engineers used that body of mathematics to build a real machine.
Ideally, a theory based on which engineers built something, but not the other way around, i.e. when something exists and some theorists are trying to build a de facto model of it. Edit: a theory that involves infinities.
Spot the contradiction in this sentence. Even if I would like to argue with you on unedefined problem you have, I can't satisfy your requirements when they're contradictory.
I see PDE's in TCP papers, I don't know what's your problem.
Of course I expect you will dismiss that as too "astral" of an example, but ask Vint Cerf if he did not need any calculus. And then ask him (or Lloyd Wood) again about his new suite of protocols designed for guaranteed connectivity in spite of enormous latencies in orbital and interplanetary internet (with cisco routers with PDE-optimized buffer sizes orbiting already on several satellites).
" I'd like to warn you though, that because I'm more or less familiar with the subject, I think it will be very difficult to find what I'm asking for."
Cool. Rather than posted challenges, how about educating us to why we are wrong. If you know this area well I'd be interested to learn more.
Programming languages, compiler design and construction, operating systems, networking on all levels including protocol design, traffic analysis, etc; multithreading, games, browsers, document management systems, financial applications, telephony, CAD's, a lot of web development - are among the areas I worked in during my career. (I never touched signal processing though.)
Although in some narrow areas I've seen non-trivial calculus, but I barely remember anything that involves infinities and is significant for the solution.
You're still not answering my questions. Do you believe that no engineers use limits or calculus? Do you believe that limits and calculus are unrelated to the idea of infinity?
Now you seem to be saying: "I have never, myself, seen the concept of infinity used to solve a problem in a way I deem significant. Therefore, infinity does not exist and is not useful to anybody."
If I said the same thing about the number 65536, would it force you to program only 8-bit processors for the rest of your life?
Based on some of your earlier statements, I'm going to guess that we're using different definitions of the word "infinity." I'd guess that to you, the word "infinity" means something like "the largest possible number, denoted ∞." I'd also guess that, in your claim about calculus above, you mean something like "I have never seen a calculus problem whose solution required you to write down an ∞." Am I right?
