Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!willett!dwp
From: dwp@willett.UUCP (Doug Philips)
Newsgroups: comp.lang.misc
Subject: Re: Anyone want to design a language?
Message-ID: <553.UUL1.3#5129@willett.UUCP>
Date: 25 Feb 90 01:21:41 GMT
References: <111800@ti-csl.csc.ti.com>
Organization: Latest link in the ForthNet chain.  (Pgh, PA)
Lines: 33

In <111800@ti-csl.csc.ti.com>, gateley@m2.csc.ti.com (John Gateley) writes:
> In article <635635738.28255@myrias.com> cg@myrias.com (Chris Gray) writes:
> >One goal for ANY language is that it be quickly readable by anyone, whether
> >they are familiar with that class of language or not.
> 
> I disagree with this statement. It might be fair to say that
> a language should be readable by anyone who is familiar with
> the basic concepts, but what Chris's statement does is limit
> a language to concepts that everyone will be familiar with.
> Anything that is subtle, powerful, or exciting also has the unfortunate
> drawback that it is harder to read. Consider "call/cc" in Scheme,
> forward inferencing a la OPS5, backwards inferencing a la Prolog,
> Combinatory logic, first class functions and ...

I agree with John Gateley.  If you limit yourself to what is already
'familiar' you can't do anything really new.  Of course, it maybe that,
in the end, you end up coming back to something that is familiar.  There
is a problem of difference-distance.  It will be more confusing to have
something that looks familiar but doesn't work/act familiar than to have
something different that both looks and works/acts different.  Anyway,
I don't think you necessarily need to aim at the bizarre, but it oughta
be an option.

BTW:  I personally find readability to be tied to the regularity and
simplicity of the language.  Of course once you allow extensibility at
the syntacic level you open the door for people to write incomphrensible
gobbilty-gook.  A clear case of contradictory 'goods'!

		-Doug

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