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From: cjeffery@CS.ARIZONA.EDU ("Clinton Jeffery")
Newsgroups: comp.lang.icon
Subject: Code Dichotomy
Message-ID: <9012212025.AA01028@caslon.cs.arizona.edu>
Date: 21 Dec 90 20:25:39 GMT
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> Of course, the limits of how well a basically one-dimensional technology 
> (traditional text languages) can describe two and three dimensional
> problem domains is another question.

Text languages are only one dimensional when you lay them out "flat" in
source files.  When they execute, they are something else; recursion
(for example) just doesn't seem one-dimensional to me.

Outside the realm of graphics and visualization modern text languages are
routinely used to solve multidimensional problems.  A language's support
for multidimensional problem domains might be limited by its control and
data structures, but I think the bigger problem for graphics applications
(as well as natural language processing) is the "semantic gap" between the
source language and the problem domain.  Semantic gap can, I think, be
addressed linguistically once it is understood.