>>>>> "ESR" == Eric S Raymond <esr@thyrsus.com> writes: ESR> Greg Ewing <greg@cosc.canterbury.ac.nz>: [>> ESR wrote:] >> > What they want to be is an applicative sublanguage in >> > functional style >> >> Um, that might be what *you* want them to be, but it's the >> complete opposite of what *I* want them to be, which is a way of >> getting away from all those convoluted combinator constructs! ESR> So your theory is that non-intuitive procedural syntax so ESR> complex that it *needs* usability testing is better. ESR> Riiiight... Wow! There's so much jargon being slung here I don't know what's going on. (For the second time in the last few weeks, I feel like a bit player in a movie where all the major roles are played by Peter Sellers. <wink>) Seriously, I don't understand how to apply terms like "applicative sublanguage in functional style" or "procedural syntax" to a concept like list comprehensions. The basic idea is to express the elements of list using a set-like notation similar to the one used by mathematicians. I don't know whether to call that applicative, functional, or procedural; perhaps none of them applu. Maybe it's just late, but I suspect that these high-level terms don't inform the debate much. I think we can all agree on two things: 1. Greg and Eric have different goals, which is fine. 2. Usability testing is always a good thing. To paraphrase Fred Brooks, even the best language designers aren't so omniscient as to get it right the first time. Jeremy
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