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Well, I'm still struggling with the question!

I wasn't thinking ideas vs their expression.

I see you're saying: you can have different expressions of Euclid for people of different abilities. (Actually, even different proofs for different levels: the high school proof of the Inscribed Angle Theorem is different in part from Euclid's, III, 20 (though I found Euclid's clearer and simpler)).

The difference I noted was just that geometry is like one codebase. But programmers deal with many codebases - there's no ugrad or high school course in a particular codebase!

Though, in a large company, do you get experts in their key codebase, both practiced and talented. But there's still a reluctance to invest your all in a codebase - what if they rewrite? Or go out of business? Or you quit? Your investment is lost. Not so with geometry.

There's also market forces for the adoption of third-party libraries (a library of theorems - like Elements' books!) - dominating the market will require being accessible to a range of abilities. A "pop culture", for better or worse.

I guess you'd say: "fine, the easier expressions will dominate". But I don't think there'll be any higher expression at all...

So... not a difference in essence, just in its role in the world.

BTW I find Euclid very hard to read, but easy to understand (so far, anyway).

BTW those links I gave are to a "wiki-like computer document".




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