From: Louis J Scoras <louis.j.scoras@...>
Date: 2006-10-17T03:46:07+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the reason for this syntax?

On 10/16/06, Kevin Olemoh <darkintent@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.

Kevin;

Where are you going with all of this?  Your arguments are unsound
because you keep using false analogies.  Sure, natural languages are
superficially similar to computer languages, but what does any of this
have to do with your initial complaint?  In fact, I've come under the
impression that you've even confused yourself.  At first you were
complaining that Ruby shouldn't force you to do things a specific way,
yet your most recent responses indicate that you believe that all
languages should converge to the same place.

This is exactly the point that Austin was getting at.  If there was
such a convergence, things would inevitably be lost in the
translation.  That's not the worse part.  Consider: who gets to choose
which is the correct way for a language to handle a specific feature?
Who gets to decide which idioms should be native to the language and
which should not?  You? Certainly not me.  And hopefully--for the sake
of all of our souls--not the Java guys.  Well, I'm just kidding on the
last one--kinda.

> 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.)

Relevance?  You just said that there is no need for one official language.

> 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.

Again, what does this have to do with anything?  If you think this has
any bearing on whether the keyword should be elsif or elseif, IMHO you
have gotten yourself a little off track.


-- 
Lou.