On 03/30/2018 08:56 AM, Mark Waddingham via use-livecode wrote:
I'd suggest that the language doesn't matter - so 'natural language like' would perhaps be a better term but even then is that really what we mean?
A good question to ask here might be "what are the pain points of the language as it now exists?"
Since I always use strict variable checking I don't have to worry about unquoted literals because the compiler will always give me an error. For me the pain of having to put quotes around literals is muchly offset by the security of having the compiler keep me out of trouble. Mostly. YMMV.
On the other hand, there are certain keywords that I think really should be constants and not unquoted literals. I find it a pain to have to put quotes around color names. If I want to set a text color to black, I find it awkward to have to set it to "black".
So we are perhaps talking about constructing language(s) which allows a computer to be instructed more like we would a human - i.e. not having to define every single thing in mind numbing detail, knowing that the receiver has enough competence and knowledge to infer and fill in the gaps correctly and then carrying out those actions with a high degree of accuracy (although computers are probably already better for accuracy in many domains - they just need their hand held throughout!) or at least have the ability to shout when things really don't 'compute'. In this vein I'm not sure syntax is so important.
I'm still not ready to have computers drive cars. -- Mark Wieder ahsoftw...@gmail.com _______________________________________________ use-livecode mailing list use-livecode@lists.runrev.com Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your subscription preferences: http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
