Spec#, nullables and more

[bearophile]

Walter Bright:

> Yeah, well, my brain is full. In order to learn new facts, I must discard an 
> equivalent number of existing ones. I've had to discard everything I ever 
> learned about chemistry, for example.

As a human brain gets older, its ability to quickly retain new information decreases. When you are 18 years old you are able to learn lot of stuff the first time you hear it, while when you are 50 years old you need to listen to the same information some times to learn (unless you are very trained to learn a specific kind of information: a chess master is able to quickly memorize all the moves of a game even at old age).

But what you have said is partially wrong. The mammal brain doesn't have a fixed space for information, the more you learn the more space you have to learn, because while neurons are in finite number and their number decreases with age, new and synapses can be build every day, and higher level ways to store information in the semantic network may be invented by a mind.

Book titles about what I have said on request :-)

Keep learning,
bye,
bearophile