On Wed, Apr 07, 2010 at 01:09:54PM +0100, RW wrote: > On Tue, 6 Apr 2010 21:07:17 -0600 > Chad Perrin <per...@apotheon.com> wrote: > > > On Tue, Apr 06, 2010 at 01:20:49PM +0100, RW wrote: > > > On Mon, 5 Apr 2010 19:55:44 -0600 > > > Chad Perrin <per...@apotheon.com> wrote: > > > > > > > On Mon, Apr 05, 2010 at 05:36:32PM +0100, RW wrote: > > > > > There are more things in heav'n and earth, Horatio, than are > > > > dreamt of by designers of eagerly evaluated prefix notation > > > > languages. > > > > > > And most of them are obscure for good reasons. Just because a a > > > syntax fits into a classification scheme doesn't make it a good > > > idea. > > > Shall we trade more trite sniping, or would you like to say something > > more substantive? > > You started it.
1. No, I used a misquote to lead into a lengthy explanation. 2. Seriously? Are you not aware of how juvenile that sounds? > > > > > > Natural languages are mostly driven by spoken usage, in which people > > > firm-up half-formed ideas as they speak - this is not a good model > > > for programming languages. If you are hacking out a quick and dirty > > > script it may be convenient to type the decision after the action, > > > but it don't I think it promotes good quality software. > > > > This sounds exactly like the complaints Pythonistas use to explain why > > they have a deep hatred of Perl. If that's how you feel, I'd prefer > > you stop trying to tell me how Perl should work, and just use > > something else. > > I'm not, I'm expressing an opinion that this is not a feature worth > copying. Judging by your further disputations with Mr. Schwartz, I don't think I believe you. > > > > Imperative languages have a natural order of decision followed by > > > action, and code is most easily readable if the syntax doesn't try > > > to subvert that. > > > > . . . except when the "natural order of decision" varies > > significantly, such as when comparing functions with operators. It > > gets even more confusing when both "functions" and "operators" are > > actually methods in object oriented languages with an imperative > > design, because suddenly the difference between a "function" and an > > "operator" becomes purely arbitrary. There's nothing about > > arbitrariness that suggests a "natural order". > > Expression are different. When you are trying to understand thousands > of lines of code, the order of execution within an expression is fine > detail, but the flow of execution is something that needs to be > taken-in easily. This doesn't change anything I said. > > > It's kind of odd you rail against natural language then talk about > > I'm not railing again natural languages, I just don't think they have > much relevance. It's kind of odd you rail against natural language *in this context*. I thought "in this context" was obvious. > > > imperative languages having a "natural order" -- which is, presumably, > > based on the expectations of people who have been conditioned to think > > that way by their use of natural language. > > No, it's conditioned by causality, and other mainstream programming > languages. > > People juggle a lot of languages, being different for the sake of it > isn't very helpful. Who said anything about being different for the sake of being different? If you find it too difficult to actually respond to what I said, please refrain from responding. > > > Frankly, if everybody just stuck to a purely "natural order of > > decision" approach to imperative language design, we would never even > > have developed structured programming. > > I have no idea what you trying to say here. I presume it must be some > kind of straw man argument. It's not a straw man argument. Your presumption is wrong. I have no idea how what I said could not be perfectly obvious. It's pretty clear. -- Chad Perrin [ original content licensed OWL: http://owl.apotheon.org ]
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