From: Kevin Olemoh <darkintent@...>
Date: 2006-10-17T02:18:03+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the reason for this syntax?

Who said you had to force anything?  Why do you assume that in all
cases having multiple dialects is beneficial whether we are talking
about operating systems or things we use to communicate with people.
Its a flase assumption in reality, there are languages that exist that
do not have a concept of "past" like there is in eg Romance languages
so it becomes almost impossible to try to express the concept in that
language.

If you have ten tribes in a given area that all speak different
languages it will be pretty hard to do business if you do not have at
least one language that is commonly spoken between a majority of the
groups involved at the very least. This of course does not mean that a
state must only have one official language (Some areas of China have
more than one official language other than the standardized one.)

Back to computers:

The situation with binary formats is just plain ridiculous and there
is no way to justify a spat between maintainers creating a situation
where repositories for the same distribution (dialect) are
incompatible with each other! (Fedora had this problem for quite some
time.)  Had there already been a standard binary type for Linux as a
whole the problem would have never gotten as bad as it did with Fedora
or has with Linux in general.  Its fine to have a bazillion binary
formats for all I care however Linux as a community should have one
that will just work more often than not on any Linux system.  Without
such a thing the diversity serves to create a weakness in the
useability of these systems as opposed to a strength.

On 10/16/06, Martin Coxall <pseudo.meta@gmail.com> wrote:
> > My point is: diversity of language leads to diversity of culture and
> > diversity of thought.
> >
>
> Absolutely. Good programmers should ensure where possible that they
> are coding regularly in at least two languages, and should take the
> effort to learn many more.
>
> But remember, a language that doesn't allow you to think about
> programming in a new way isn't worth knowing...
>
> Martin
>
>