From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: *** X-Spam-Status: No, score=3.8 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID, RATWARE_MS_HASH,RATWARE_OUTLOOK_NONAME autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,2afac1a4161c7f35 X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: "Nick Roberts" Subject: Re: Distinguishing type names from other identifiers Date: 1998/01/26 Message-ID: <01bd2aa1$e1b86020$34fe82c1@xhv46.dial.pipex.com>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 319460727 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <6agcg1$i1k@lotho.delphi.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Organization: UUNet UK server (post doesn't reflect views of UUNet UK) Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-01-26T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Original BASIC (remember Kemeny and Kurtz?) used the $ sign to distinguish a string identifier from a numeric one. Microsoft (et al) BASIC added % for integers, ! for single-precision floating-point, and # for double-precision. I should imagine that in 50 years' time, computers will mostly be programmed in (spoken) natural language, using heuristic artificial intelligence techiniques to 'home in' on the required functionality. 'Computers' by then will, I would guess, either be as small as a credit-card, and worn in the top-pocket (where they can speak and be spoken to by the wearer), or large and walking around. -- Nick Roberts Croydon, UK Proprietor, ThoughtWing Software; Independent Software Development Consultant * Nick.Roberts@dial.pipex.com * Voicemail & Fax +44 181-405 1124 * *** Always game for a verbal joust (usually as the turkey) *** Brian Rogoff wrote in article ... > On 25 Jan 1998 tmoran@bix.com wrote: > > > It's somewhat odd, actually, that most computer languages use only word > > order (counting punctuation symbols as words) for parsing and don't > > use spelling/prefix/suffix changes to the words themselves as grammatical > > indicators. I wonder if that will still be the case in 50 years? > > (Early) Fortran is one. The Scheme community uses a convention of "!" as a > suffix for side-effecting functions, and "?" for queries. Some other Lisps > adopt a convention to distinguish types. OCaml also has some > capitalization rules for various entities. [...]