Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!ncrlnk!ncr-sd!hp-sdd!hplabs!hpda!hpdslab!hpiacla!scottg
From: scottg@hpiacla.HP.COM (Scott Gulland)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Languages in the the REAL world -- Listing
Message-ID: <4950003@hpiacla.HP.COM>
Date: 23 Nov 88 06:43:06 GMT
References: <325@lafcol.UUCP>
Organization: Hewlett Packard
Lines: 98

/ hpiacla:comp.lang.misc / stachour@umn-cs.CS.UMN.EDU (Paul Stachour) /  2:58 pm  Nov 20, 1988 /


>>Each of us have unique gifts which allow us to excel in some areas
>>while in others ... well we don't do quite so well.  It may be quite
>>true that you are unable to become fluent in a language in just two
>>weeks, this could very well be the norm.  I'm sure there are other
>>areas you excel in.  However, I have had to write large modules (5K+
>>lines of code) in four different languages over the last three years.
>
>I don't call 5k+ lines of code "large modules". 

Note that I said 5K '+' lines of code.  5K is the lower limit.  Many
of these modules are much larger.

>In fact, I suspect
>that they are not modules at all, but incorrectly modularized
>subsystems.  A 5K+ lines "module", if it really is a module,
>is very interesting.  Grady Booch has over 500 components in
>his set, and none of them is anywhere near that size.

The term module is simply referring to code which provides a solution
to some specific task.  This task can be arbitrarily complex.  The term
module does not imply any structure and is definitely not a single peice of
code 5K lines in length.  It may consist of any number of component peices.
Subsystem could also be an equivalent term for it.

>Yes, I can write a 5000+ lines-of-code, but that hardly
>tests fluency.  How big are full-length novels in natural languages?
>And even they use a very small subset of a natural language.

I agree.  It is the comprehension the the language which counts.
Its knowing how to use the all of the features of a language correctly
even though any given project may use only a subset.  This I have been
able to do.

>>It took me at most 2 weeks to become fluent in each language and
>>usually only one week.  I do mean fluent here, not just competent in
>>the language.  There are many other people I know who also have
>>this ability.  
>
>   Who considers you fluent?  You or a "native speaker"?

Why a "native speaker" of course.  I thought I made that clear.


>   I know hundreds of people who consider themselves fluent in "C".
>Yet, when I ask them questions like:  "What method do you use in
>C when writing modules to avoid the name-clash problem?" they
>stare.  And it usually takes 20 minutes to explain the problem.
>And when I ask questions such as "Under what circumstances you
>use '#define' versus 'typedef ENUM'?" they don't know.  And when
>I ask them "Does your dialect of C support bit-fields, and if so
>in what way?" they've never looked it up.  I could go on and on
>with my questions, but I have discovered that most people who think
>they are fluent in a language aren't.  They are like the people who
>programmed in FORTRAN for 10+years, and got suprised by the way
>in which the values of their variables no longer persisted between
>invocations of a subprogram on a different machine.  They were even
>more suprised when I pointed out that the FORTRAN 66 standard didn't
>even mention the semantics question, and that their FORTRAN vendor
>was perfectly legal.

I'm glad that none of the members in my team nor myself fall into
this catagory.

>Berlitz, who can "learn a new language in two weeks". IF you are,
>I'd like to have you working where I do.  But I do suspect that
>you are "merely" one who learns the initial portion of languages fast.

Your suspicions are wrong again.

>   I still have trouble in French not confusing "ecouter" with
>"entendre". (I don't have a French book here, and may have spelled
>them incorrectly.)  They mean "to hear" and "to listen"; and I 
>somtimes confuse the two.  And I also have cross-language problems,
>sometimes saying "gare" (French for railroad-station) when I mean
>Bahnhoff (German for railroad-station).  And, in programming languages,
>I sometimes write "\=" when I mean "/=" for not-equals (or was it
>"!=" or "^=" or "~=").  Someone totally fluent in a language does not make
>that kind of mistakes, but someone who is only partially fluent does.

You know, I make the same kinds of mistakes.  Even in English, my native
language.  I frequently mis-spell words and my punctuation stinks.  It seems
by your definition of fluent that less than 1% of the American public would
be considered fluent in English.  

>  In conclusion, there is a lot more to a language than just learning
>the syntax:  There's the subtle semantics, the language interactions,
>and the fact that what "always works" in C doesn't all of a sudden
>when you go to another world (say VAX-VMS) and discover that one of
>the ways-of-working that you always implictly thought was part of the
>language was "just a subroutine convention" and it doesn't work there,
>just as natural language changes in subtle ways between British-English
>and US-English and Australian-English and ...

Agreed.  That's why I do my homework whenever I move to a new architecture.
I learn those differences first thing.