From: Kevin Olemoh <darkintent@...>
Date: 2006-10-17T05:07:48+09:00
Subject: Re: What is the reason for this syntax?

If you read up a few posts you will see that someone other than myself
brought up a "metalanguage" in response to someone else's comment
about the elsif keyword. (As far as I am concerned I do not think
having a specific keyword for else if is even nessecary at all but it
does not bother me.  )I actually responded to this person musing that
perhaps we (as in the programming world itself not nessecarily Ruby
specifically) should form a committee not unlike what exists for html
in order to adress the issue of differences in syntax and features.  I
said that there is no need for one official language to refute
Austin's postulate that having a lingua frnca requires the destruction
and or limiting of other languages in any way. I pointed out that some
areas of China have more than one official language for that purpose.

I'm only using "natural" language to point out how it could be
beneficial to work towards having a lingua franca with "manufactured"
languages.

Also note that I never meant to imply that any existing language let
alone ruby could become the lingua franca of the computer world.
On 10/16/06, Louis J Scoras <louis.j.scoras@gmail.com> wrote:
> 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.
>
>