Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!husc6!cca!g-rh
From: g-rh@cca.CCA.COM (Richard Harter)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Perfect language features: how many languages?
Message-ID: <24112@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: 7 Feb 88 05:44:54 GMT
References: <3928@ames.arpa> <2400001@otter.HP.COM> <960@ssc-bee.ssc-vax.UUCP> <10407@mimsy.UUCP> <4930@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1535@uoregon.UUCP> <5015@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 45
Summary: Computer 'languages' aren't languages

In article <5015@watdragon.waterloo.edu> djsalomon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Daniel J. Salomon) writes:
>
>An analogy with natural languages would be a better one...

	Permit me to intrude with a point here.  Computer languages
are not languages in the sense that natural languages are languages.
Computer 'languages' are really more like recipes for languages.  If
you look at a natural language such as English, you see that it has
a grammar, certain rules of usage and style, etc.  You also see a 
dictionary with thousands of defined words.  When I use a natural
language I may have to create a special term now and then, but, for
the most part I use the same vocabulary that every one else uses.

	Computer 'languages' are like natural languages with all of
the vocabulary stripped out, except for those few words needed to
implement the grammar.  When one writes a computer program one spends
a fair bit of time simply defining the terms that will be used in the
program.  Each program is a separate language.

	If people used natural languages the way they use computer
languages, any time some wanted to write a book they would first have
to write the dictionary to be used in the book.

	One can envision the following scheme.  Language X comes with
both a grammar and a dictionary.  The dictionary has a large number
of things defined in it with complete definitions.  For a simple
example, i might be defined as an integer used as an index with scope
restricted to the block that it is in.  Programs in language X have
no declarations at all.  The compiler for language X does not build
a symbol table -- it takes its symbol table from the dictionary.
[Naturally there would be provisions for extending the dictionary
and for adding additional special purpose dictionaries.]

	The interesting thing about language X is that all of the
programs written in language X share the same vocabulary.  In the
current fashion in computer languages, each program has its own
vocabulary, except insofar as usage is repeated from one program
to the next.  It does remind one of the tower of Babel, doesn't.

	This might be a good thing to do.
-- 

In the fields of Hell where the grass grows high
Are the graves of dreams allowed to die.
	Richard Harter, SMDS  Inc.