At 11:40 AM 8/7/00 -0400, Michael Mathews wrote:
>In the MLC discussion I have read many comments about how various "C-style"
>features would be easier for people to learn, remember, and use. In fact the
>MLC discussion itself was inspired by a desire to make Perl more C-like
>(actually Java-like) in how it handles comments. Is this a worthwhile
>argument, even on its own?
Perl is one of the very few languages geared towards a conceptual model
which is essentially people. Pretty much all the other languages I can
think of target a conceptual model where a person isn't central. That's
something I don't think perl should lose. Becoming more C-like (or
Lisp-like, or APL-like, or Prolog-like, or...) is moving in the wrong
direction. Snagging things they do, sure. Just not the way they do it,
unless that way maps well to the way that normal human beings (and let's
face it, that does *not* target your average programmer dead-on) think of
things.
Human brains work very differently from computer brains. At this point we
no longer need to cater to the computer--we have the power and the
technology to make people the central focus and still perform well.
Dan
--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski even samurai
[EMAIL PROTECTED] have teddy bears and even
teddy bears get drunk
