Comment by kemiller

Thanks. My school's CS department was very strong in theory, among other things, and so there were a lot of very mathy people in the program mixed in with the more practical proles. Most of them were very nice, but there was something of a communication problem because (I assume) they were too naturally talented at such things to be able to explain them very well. I remember one guy who would get this look of satisfaction on his face every time a teacher would start talking about formalisms, as if he were eating his favorite food, or sitting down after a long day on his feet, and that's my first association with the word "formal" in a CS context.