Type/Token, Object/Variable, Identity/Reference
All three distinctions come from different areas of thought (philosophy, logic [I hold that it's separate from phil; maybe philosophy and mathematics' lovechild] and programming), but they all make the same distinction. That is, the idea that some thing has the characteristic such that it is that very thing. Variables refer to objects, tokens can be grouped into types, and identity points to the same reference.
Whilst the definition seems to be the same, it's use in all three subjects differ greatly. Quite frankly, Object-Oriented programming has been the crux of what I've done so far; both python and java are OO, though java has been described to be dogmatically so. At the very heart of it, it seems to be about manipulating objects, or parsing data as temporary objects to get to a goal. Variables are simply an easy way to reference these objects, in different areas and for different purposes. It's easy to see/understand.
Fr logic, the distinction is something I'm still scratching my head over. I can see how it opens the breadth of what can be conveyed my monadic predicate logic, but in symbols, a=b only seems to make things more complicated. Though I confess this is probably my inexperience with using identity. I'll probably come back to this entry after I've done a few more trees and translations and whatnot.
Philosophy is a bit of a doozy. It's a very important distinction (much like normative/descriptive, a-priori/posteriori, or if you're really pretentious; continental/analytic), but so far I've only seen it referenced in terms of the mind/body problem, ie the continuity of the self been dependent on the existence of this same self, not 'you' as a type (same psychology, body, mind, everything!) but the same token (the immaterial soul?). Rather than write an essay on my livejournal about it, I'm going to go write essays that will get me good marks. xD Though I suppose it doesn't hurt to talk about these issues in a colloquial manner.
Whilst the definition seems to be the same, it's use in all three subjects differ greatly. Quite frankly, Object-Oriented programming has been the crux of what I've done so far; both python and java are OO, though java has been described to be dogmatically so. At the very heart of it, it seems to be about manipulating objects, or parsing data as temporary objects to get to a goal. Variables are simply an easy way to reference these objects, in different areas and for different purposes. It's easy to see/understand.
Fr logic, the distinction is something I'm still scratching my head over. I can see how it opens the breadth of what can be conveyed my monadic predicate logic, but in symbols, a=b only seems to make things more complicated. Though I confess this is probably my inexperience with using identity. I'll probably come back to this entry after I've done a few more trees and translations and whatnot.
Philosophy is a bit of a doozy. It's a very important distinction (much like normative/descriptive, a-priori/posteriori, or if you're really pretentious; continental/analytic), but so far I've only seen it referenced in terms of the mind/body problem, ie the continuity of the self been dependent on the existence of this same self, not 'you' as a type (same psychology, body, mind, everything!) but the same token (the immaterial soul?). Rather than write an essay on my livejournal about it, I'm going to go write essays that will get me good marks. xD Though I suppose it doesn't hurt to talk about these issues in a colloquial manner.