>> > Haskell is still pretty unreadable, therefore a
>>> bit of a kludge. But at least it looks unreadable
>>> from the get-go and doesn't pretend otherwise.
>>
>>Korean is pretty unreadable to me. And Thai.
>
> Yawn. Suggesting that I'm just arguing from the position of
> ignorance? Nice one. I figured someone would try that. But I stand by
> it nevertheless. My argument was a little more subtle than that,
> thankyouverymuch.
I'm trying to follow this, and I'm not sure I agree with your arguments -
but I do agree with the spirit of what you are saying.
I think at issue is not so much individual languages, but the philosophies
they represent. I think it's fair to say that functional languages are the
closest to mathematics - and it's also fair to blame mathematicians for a
lot of unreadability ;) but this unreadability and "un-naturalness" is for
a reason. I read this yesterday, which I think is appropriate:
http://www.vex.net/~trebla/weblog/common.html
I think this argument usually comes up, not because of aesthetic reasons,
but because there is a feeling that programming is hard, we are not very
good at it, and there must be ways of improving the situation.
Ironically, haskell is a language which tries very hard to make
programming easier and safer (by constraining what you can do).
cheers,
dave
Received on Fri Jan 04 2008 - 09:16:05 GMT