On Thu, 2008-01-03 at 21:46 +0100, douglas edric stanley wrote:
> Well there I simply don't agree. The paper and
> the typography are not minor details.
I say this because if you kept the paper and typography but swapped the
underlying text you'd have a different novel. But I believe a modern
reprint of a old novel is still the same novel.
> Hmmm. I have a feeling we aren't going to get
> anywhere on this subject. If we keep going back
> and forth like this, we should probably just drop
> it.
That would be a shame -- I feel I'm missing something, and I'd like to
know what it is!
> Nothing. Again, I wasn't making a moral argument.
> There's nothing wrong with it at all! But I still
> stand by the idea that text-based programming has
> very little to do with linguistics.
Ok, so is your argument that formal and natural languages are very
different, and that computer programming should not be as tied to formal
languages as it is?
> >"Playing puzzles and knitting" seems a good description of programming, to me.
>
> Me too. So why do most programming languages look
> like Scrabble? What about good old fashioned
> blocks? Or tangrams?
I don't know. My hunch is that an evolved ability for speech
(communication via a linear sequence of symbolic movements) has somehow
been appropriated. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think you'd agree
that while a program might look like scrabble, when you read it, it
evokes something very different and non-linear.
alex
Received on Thu Jan 03 2008 - 23:05:33 GMT