Chapter 17 Language and Mathematics

Willy was somewhat panicked. He only started running after he was sure that the little devil from Yulia's house had truly walked far away.

When that little devil had bumped into him, he had really been scared out of his wits. He had tried with all his might to keep himself under control.

"This can't go on..."

Thinking this, Willy ran quickly and soon left the edge of the village, crouching beside the main road. A cloud of dust approached. Willy stood up and waved his arms.

The horn blared. Amidst the sounds of braking and the explosive dust cloud, a black figure stopped in front of Willy. Then came the sound of adjusting the camera's focal length. After a while, a rough voice finally said, "Willy? Why are you here?"

"Enoch..." Willy's voice trembled, "I'm so scared, Enoch."

Willy made his living off the heavy workers and naturally knew their routine. He knew that it was very possible for Enoch to pass by this road at that time.

"Hey! What's there to be scared of?" Enoch didn't care at all.

Willy screamed, "It was you who told me to push that guy out yesterday! It was you! You can't ignore me! Otherwise... otherwise..." Willy said, breaking into tears, "Big brother Enoch! I..."

In the beginning, he really did want to ingratiate himself with Enoch, which is why he agreed to "mess with 'Yog'". Among the heavy machinery, Enoch was the most generous. Most importantly, Enoch was lazy and often hired other workers for loading and unloading. As long as he could get along with Enoch, Willy wouldn't have to worry about work.

But Willy had not expected that "Yog"... no, that "Mountain", seemed to be really powerful.

He actually managed to defeat a Martial Artist!

Enoch's tone also became a bit tense, "Did he discover you? No, that can't be? Everyone around us was one of our people... they all participated, it's impossible for them to rat us out."

"It's that brat from Yulia's house!" Willy screamed.

"Yuki? He saw it?" Enoch was troubled. He indeed found Yuki annoying, and if it weren't for Yuki, maybe Yulia would have accepted him by now—even Xiang Shan was dug out by Yuki.

"He was walking on the street just now and bumped into me! He bumped into me!" Willy screamed, "That brat must have seen it! Otherwise... otherwise..."

"Damn, just because of a bump?" Enoch was torn between laughter and frustration, "Is that such a big deal?"

"What do you mean 'no big deal'? I pushed that monster!" Willy shouted, "Even that dog lost, there's no way I could win!"

"That was just good luck!" Enoch said fiercely, "It's only because the Grand Master was feeling kind! Pah, what winning. Isn't he still lying on the ground saying 'I lost, I lost' or something? Such a coward... pah!"

"You can't ignore me!" Willy screamed, "Let's lure that kid out! Whether we crush him into pieces or dismantle him to sell as parts..."

"Hey! Are you crazy?" Enoch jumped in fright. He really intended to be with Yulia. Enoch knew his own personality; he couldn't keep secrets. If he laid a hand on Yuki, he couldn't be with Yulia anymore.

Enoch was already a bit annoyed by this guy's pestering. But he also felt that letting this guy act on his own, if something happened to Yuki, it might implicate himself. Enoch then said, "It's not a big deal... Look, I was actually planning to have some fun in the city today. How about this, I'll treat you to something exciting, how's that?"

"Something exciting?" Willy was a bit bewildered, "What is it? A competition? Or a new game?"

"Much more thrilling than that... come on, get on the truck!"

Enoch didn't have a driver's seat. He tilted the cargo bed slightly, allowing Willy to clamber up himself.

Dust flew everywhere.

.......................................

"A true programmer starts his programming with bare metal!"

"A true programmer doesn't discriminate between object-oriented and procedural programming, nor between strong typing and type unsafety. From machine languages to assemblers to compilers to countless high-level applications, he knows it all!"

Certain memories shone brightly. Xiang Shan could no longer remember who had said this to him. However, some components of "knowledge" reminded him that this person was a famous programmer from history, someone who had once determined the face of history.

Xiang Shan had a deep relationship with "this person", and so he learned "everything" about programming from him.

The essence of this thing is "mathematics".

Programming is linguistics, but it is also mathematics.

Or to say, linguistics is a kind of mathematics.

Around the end of World War II, mathematicians ventured into a brand new field called the "Word Problem". In this field, some mathematical concepts donned a "linguistic" exterior, and through the formal structure created by algebra, they naturally indicated themselves. Mathematicians tried to play with mathematics using the rules of linguistics.

In 1944, Emil Post, an American logician and artificial intelligence pioneer, proved the undecidability of the Word Problem.

Then, in 1947, without knowledge of Post's work, Anatoly Markov, the son of Andrei Markov, made the same proof.

Within "language", there exists "the problem of undecidability". This was the first undecidability problem that was neither proposed by humans nor appeared in the field of computational science.

At the same time, linguists, moving in the opposite direction, reached the same realm.

If modern linguistics originated from Ferdinand de Saussure, then Noam Chomsky was the summit that followed Saussure. Beyond being widely recognized as a linguist, philosopher, and social scientist, Chomsky could also be considered a mathematician.

His research in linguistics has even been recorded in the history of mathematics.

"The grammars of context-free languages and regular languages," two fields created by Chomsky, "also hold significant status in the realm of computer science theories."

Geneticists hold Chomsky in equal esteem; they believe that Chomsky's research on language could potentially be the key to deciphering the genetic code—they might be able to infer the "language of the creator" hidden within genetic information.

Or rather, the "program" followed by genetic chemistry.

As long as one has a deep enough understanding of the mathematics in relevant fields, creating a unique language is not too difficult a task.

The real challenge is ensuring that while the language remains obscure to humans, it is simple and understandable for machines.

The more obscure the language, the greater the advantage it provides in Inner Strength. Heroes rely on Inner Strength to hide themselves within the network, within this world. "Language" is the root of all their defenses. Their brain's linguistic functions are highly coordinated with their own Inner Strength.

The more obscure the language familiar to the brain, the more indiscernible is the Inner Strength.

If one merely causes the computer's efficiency to decrease for the sake of an advantage in Inner Strength, that's putting the cart before the horse.

Lisp just doesn't achieve the quality of being "obscure." It is too close to mathematics, such that as long as one knows its basics, any competent mathematician would understand its use.

C language is a "high-level language with natural language features"; it is used by so many people that the language exhibits a state of "wild growth," with "linguistic evolution" phenomena even occurring within a short time span—this mimics the evolution of natural languages quite closely. If there were two areas of the network in the world relatively closed off from each other, then C language might even evolve into "dialects."

Xiang Shan was familiar with both sides.

In the realm of Inner Strength, it's a case of one method comprehending all methods.

Xiang Shan felt that there should still be someone he knew, someone who might not be very famous, but who absolutely stood on the boundary of human cognition.

He had learned a lot from his friends—or so it should be.

But upon reflection, this seemed counterintuitive. In Xiang Shan's memory, a person could at most study one field in depth while all other areas remained merely touched upon. Human knowledge had long since expanded beyond the scope any single individual could master.

He shouldn't both understand engineering and be proficient in programming, also excelling in mathematics. Even if he really was good friends with someone so capable, it wouldn't make sense that he could just learn their strengths.

In his later years, Einstein's best friend was the top-tier mathematician Gödel. However, this friendship did not bring Einstein's mathematics to Gödel's level—at least in the eyes of true mathematicians, Albert Einstein's mathematical skills were still at the level of "sufficient for a physicist."

But then...things happened in such a strange way.

Xiang Shan dissected the terminal's operating system. He replaced the original compiler with his own.

Whether it is the pedestrian Java, the mere foundational C, the beautifully lonely Perl akin to ancient poetry, the passionate Ruby like modern poetry, the Python that is nearly divine after mastery though easy to learn and hard to perfect, or the closest to math and creation Lisp, even their successors were unsuitable for sustaining the existence of Inner Strength.

Simply because they were all created "for others to use."

These languages are inherently designed to be understood by people.

Only intelligence prevents others from understanding them.

Even if C language has already developed into "dialects," these "dialects" are still not enough for secrecy.

For a Hero, a good language can hide their intentions, and even when the firewalls are breached, encryption cracked, encapsulation torn open, and Small Circulation disrupted, it can still offer the last chance for retaliation.

And you cannot hope that your enemy is a fool—you need to find a way to ensure that even if your enemy is smart enough, the lack of key information prevents them from consciously touching the unceasing flow of code inside your program.

Each style of Inner Strength corresponds to a special compiler with unique grammatical conventions and naming methods. The high-level languages they compile differ greatly in design philosophy from past high-level languages.

This is a language created "to be difficult for people to understand."

If past programmers were trying to create the "best language," so good that everyone would want to use it, then the languages created by Heroes are the complete opposite: "the worst languages."

What's more valuable is that you still need to ensure that machines can accept this "bad" language,

and on this point, Xiang Shan possessed absolute confidence. At first, he didn't know where this confidence came from.

After spending two hours rewriting the compiler, he recalled even more knowledge.

His foundation in Inner Strength was an unnamed language that circulated only in a very small circle.

Very few people knew this language; it hadn't spread widely at all. Only a handful of people had seen it, and even fewer could learn it and use it. Just learning this language alone required more effort than learning a foreign language. And to program in this language was as difficult as writing top-tier poetry in a foreign language—that foreign language also had to belong to an entirely different language family from one's mother tongue.

"But when you think about it, if it really is that difficult... how did I manage to learn it?" Xiang Shan mumbled to himself, "Who am I? How come I'm so formidable?"

After completing the rewrite of the compiler, Xiang Shan seemed to unlock even more knowledge. Data streamed rapidly from the chip connected directly to his brain. Code overlaying code, irregular color blocks appeared on the terminal screen, and then it quickly shut down and restarted.

This wasn't creation ex nihilo. It seemed Xiang Shan had experienced a similar scene a long time ago.

Perhaps due to the incompleteness of his memory, he couldn't fully reproduce the techniques from that time. But even so, he likely had the capital to establish his purpose in life.

This unnamed language was certainly the most damn difficult language in the world.

But from a Hero's perspective, it was also among the strongest languages.