On 0, "John S. J. Anderson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Shawn McMahon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > > > begin Shawn McMahon quotation: > > > > > > The compliation step is seperate from the execution step, from the > > > perspective of the user. > > > > I should add "that is the definition most people mean when they don't > > know enough not to call non-scripting 'programming'". > > I'm confused by the above statement. Canceling out the double > negative, I get > > "that is the definition most people mean when they know enough to > call non-scripting 'programming'". > > Is that what you meant to say, or were you trying to say something > else? Double negatives are confusing.
No, I think he is defending some scripting languages as being also
programming languages, so that is not the likely meaning. I would
tend to cancel the double negative the other way and get:
"that is the definition most people mean when they don't know
enough to call scripting 'programming'."
Double negatives may be confusing, but in this case cancelling them
out subtly changes the meaning. The original mean that someone
doesn't realise that some scripting languages are also regarded as
programming languages, your rendition means that someone correctly
regards scripting as non-programming and my rendition means that
someone doesn't realise that all scripting langagues are also regarded
as programming languages. There is a very good Monty Python sketch
along these lines on The Album of the Soundtrack of the Trailer of the
Film of Monty Python and the Holy Grail:
That last scene was very interesting from the point of view of a
professional logician because it contained a number of logical errors,
that is faulty propositional constructions. "All wood burns," states
Sir Bedivere, thus he concludes, "All which burns is wood." This is
of course pure bs of the sort often propounded by my wife.
Universal affirmatives can only be partially converted. For instance,
all of Alma Coegen is dead, but only part of the class of dead people
is Alma Coegen. My wife does not understand this fundamental
principle, and so does not understand me, for how can someone
appreciate a professor of logic when the simplest cloth-eared sylogism
causes them to flounder?
For instance, given the premises, "All fish live in the sea," and,
"All mackeral are fish," she will conclude not that all mackeral live
in the sea but that trout live in trees, if she buys kippers it will
not rain, or even that I do not love her any more. This she calls
using her intuition. I call it crap, and it gets me very irritated,
because it is not logical.
.... [snip largely irrelevant and not entirely clean bit]
In conclusion, sex is better than logic. I can not prove this, but it
*is*, just as Mount Everest *is* and Alma Coegen *isn't*.
Goodnight.
That's enough of a ramble for this thread.
Tom
--
Tom Cook
Information Technology Services, The University of Adelaide
"That you're not paranoid does not mean they're not out to get you."
- Robert Waldner
Get my GPG public key:
https://pinky.its.adelaide.edu.au/~tkcook/tom.cook-at-adelaide.edu.au
pgpDP44TCFZBe.pgp
Description: PGP signature
