At 01:36 PM 4/25/2001 -0400, Eric Roode wrote:
>John Porter wrote:
> >
> >Dan Sugalski wrote:
> >> The one downside is that you'd have essentially your own private
> language.
> >> Whether this is a bad thing or not is a separate issue, of course.
> >
> >IIUC, this ability is precisely what Larry was saying Perl6 would have.
>
>I may have my history wrong here, but didn't Ada try that? Super-
>flexible, redefinable syntax? And wasn't the result that nobody could
>read anybody else's code, so Standards Committees were set up to
>define Legal Styles that basically reduced the syntaxes that you could
>use to just the One Standard Style?
Sounds about right.
And on the other hand you have things like Forth where every program
essentially defines its own variant of the language, and that works out
reasonably well. (Granted it's more of a niche language, especially today,
but that's probably more due to its RPN syntax)
"A power so great, it can only be used for good or evil!" - Firesign Theater
:)
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
