A Quote by Alan Perlis
In English every word can be verbed. Would that it were so in our programming languages.
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In English every word can be verbed.
My impression was and is that many programming languages and tools represent solutions looking for problems, and I was determined that my work should not fall into that category. Thus, I follow the literature on programming languages and the debates about programming languages primarily looking for ideas for solutions to problems my colleagues and I have encountered in real applications. Other programming languages constitute a mountain of ideas and inspiration-but it has to be mined carefully to avoid featurism and inconsistencies.
I was fascinated by the lack of a word for a parent who has lost a child. We have no word in English. I thought for sure there'd be a word in Irish but there is none. And then I looked in several other languages and could not find one, until I found the word Sh'khol in Hebrew. I'm still not sure why so many languages don't have a word for this sort of bereavement, this shadowing.
I work in Hebrew. Hebrew is deeply inspired by other languages. Not now, for the last three thousand years, Hebrew has been penetrated and fertilized by ancient Semitic languages - by Aramaic, by Greek, by Latin, by Arabic, by Yiddish, by Latino, by German, by Russian, by English, I could go on and on. It's very much like English. The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages. Every language has influences and is an influence.
Although mathematical notation undoubtedly possesses parsing rules, they are rather loose, sometimes contradictory, and seldom clearly stated. [...] The proliferation of programming languages shows no more uniformity than mathematics. Nevertheless, programming languages do bring a different perspective. [...] Because of their application to a broad range of topics, their strict grammar, and their strict interpretation, programming languages can provide new insights into mathematical notation.
When I was quite young I fondly imagined that all foreign languages were codes for English. I thought that "hat," say, was the real and actual name of the thing, but that people in other countries, who obstinately persisted in speaking the code of their forefathers, might use the word "ibu," say, to designate not merely the concept hat, but the English word "hat." I knew only one foreign word, "oui," and since it had three letters as did the word for which it was a code, it seemed, touchingly enough, to confirm my theory.
Objections to verbification in English tend to be motivated by personal taste, not clarity. Verbed words are usually easily understood. When a word like 'friend' is declared not a verb, the problem isn't that it's confusing; it's that the protester finds it deeply annoying.
My favorite programming languages are Lisp and C. However, since around 1992 I have worked mainly on free software activism, which means I am too busy to do much programming. Around 2008 I stopped doing programming projects.
I have a few minor rules for myself but I break them all the time. For example, when translating from Romance languages to English, there is often a choice between a Latinate cognate and a Germanic equivalent. An easy example would be the Portuguese escuridão: English offers both obscurity and dark or darkness, and some translators will tell you the Latinate word is generally reserved for poetic and figurative expressions, while the Germanic word is used for colloquial and idiomatic use.
Overemphasis of efficiency leads to an unfortunate circularity in design: for reasons of efficiency early programming languages reflected the characteristics of the early computers, and each generation of computers reflects the needs of the programming languages of the preceding generation.
I'm used to shifting languages because my father used to speak to us, to my brother and I, he used to speak in English. He wanted us to be quite fluent in English, especially when he was trying to correct our behavior; he would do that in English.
The English language took in many many fertilizations, many many genes, from other languages, from foreign languages - Latin, French, Nordic languages, German, Scandinavian languages.
My sister and brother and I grew up speaking both languages - French to our father and English to our mother. But when we three kids are talking to each other, we use English.
Of all the words in all languages I know, the greatest concentration is in the English word I.
english doesn't borrow from other languages. english follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar.
With 'Scratch,' you create computer programs by snapping together graphical programming blocks, much like LEGO bricks, without any of the obscure syntax and punctuation of traditional programming languages. After creating an interactive 'Scratch' project, you can share it on the 'Scratch' website, just as you would share videos on YouTube.
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