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: <24200@cca.CCA.COM>
Date: 9 Feb 88 05:37:57 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> <24112@cca.CCA.COM> <5028@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Reply-To: g-rh@CCA.CCA.COM.UUCP (Richard Harter)
Organization: Computer Corp. of America, Cambridge, MA
Lines: 37

DJ: Daniel J. Salomon
RH: Richard Harter

DJ: An analogy with natural languages would be a better one...

RH: 	Permit me to intrude with a point here.  Computer languages
RH: are not languages in the sense that natural languages are languages.

DJ: But you have to admit that computer languages are more like
DJ: natural languages than they are like vaccines.  That is all I said.

	Well, I wasn't disagreeing -- I was somewhat changing the subject.
My point was that it might be profitable to deal with computer languages
as though they were natural languages and that, in the same way that
natural languages have a large predefined vocabulary of nouns and verbs,
so would a computer language.

	I am not so sure that I understand what it means to compare
computer languages to vaccines.  I suppose it might be something like
this.  This of a problem to be solved as an alien irritant in the body.
The computer language is analogous to the immune system.  The program
is the antibody constructed in response to the problem.

	The nice thing about this analogy is that it implies that each
program is an idiosyncratic response to each individual problem.  This
does seem to correspond depressingly well to the way programs are actually
written.

	I think, however, that the analogy breaks down, because the function
of the antibody is to identify the irritant, capture it, and pass it on to
be destroyed.  The essential function here is a general purpose mechanism
of differentiation.
-- 

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