At 06:04 PM 8/15/00 -0400, John Porter wrote:
>Dan Sugalski wrote:
> > >Generality good.
> >
> > For many things, yes. For computers, say. For people, no. Generality bad.
> > Specificity and specialization good. People aren't generalists. They're a
> > collection of specialists. The distinction is important.
>
>I'm sorry if I don't find this argument convincing.
>This argument suggests that *every* type carry a distinguishing
>prefix symbol -- including ones to distinguish between numbers and
>strings, say.
Numbers and strings really aren't different things, at least not as far as
people are concerned. They are for machines, but computer languages
ultimately aren't for machines, they're for people.
>Of course, you don't mean this. A balance must be
>struck. And while we're looking for the equilibrium, let's not
>prejudicially presume that "no symbols" is not an option.
I'm not presuming that, though there are plenty of languages already that
have no symbols. Perl's not one of them, though.
> > Even assuming highlander types, the punctuation carries a rather
> > significant amount of contextual information very compactly.
>
>Yep. So, what's the gripe with it?
>Other than that it's not what you're used to, I mean.
It's going to always be more difficult. You need to *think* to turn a word
into a symbol. = is already a symbol. Less effort's needed.
> > ...exploiting instinct and
> > inherent capabilities give you faster response times, and quicker
> > comprehension.
>
>Sure. But "instinct and inherent capabilities" do not apply here.
Yes, they do. People write source. People read source. People are the most
important piece of the system. The computer can be made to cope with the
syntax, whatever the syntax is. People can't be made to cope nearly as
easily, nor to nearly the same degree.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
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