Mark Wieder wrote:
> On 07/09/2016 10:13 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:
>
>> One might even say it becomes the "parent script" of the control.
>>
>> If only we had a word to describe that unique role clearly... ;)
>
> Ah... the problems of trying to set up a one-to-one correspondence
> between technical terms and natural language.
Agreed: pursuit of natural language patterns in programming language
design would be a distracting encumbrance.
Indeed, I think Kamins himself would agree, given how much his HyperTalk
is far more like the Smalltalk programming language than it ever
attempted to be like English.
Learnability and usability are much more productive goals for a
programming language.
Where serving those may also incidentally reflect natural language
patterns so much the better.
But natural languages and programming languages serve such very
different goals that attempting the former when you're building the
latter raises unmeetable expectations that tend toward frustrating games
of "hunt the parser".
Spend time in the forums to see this among newcomers every week.
Thankfully, the team is using the phrase "English-like" less often these
days and emphasizing the practical self-evident benefits, like
readability, more.
After all, how does one express an array in English? :)
--
Richard Gaskin
Fourth World Systems
Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
____________________________________________________________________
ambassa...@fourthworld.com http://www.FourthWorld.com
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