Re: Communications of ACM: Sir, Please Step Away from the ASR-33!

["Dmitry A. Kazakov" <mailbox@dmitry-kazakov.de>]

On Mon, 27 Dec 2010 15:41:10 +0100, Jacob Sparre Andersen wrote:

> Michael R wrote:
> 
>> There's a note in November's Communications of the ACM titled "Sir,
>> Please Step Away from the ASR-33!" with the sub-title "To move forward
>> with programming languages we must first break free from the tyranny
>> of ASCII".
>>
>> It's interesting that Ada has already stepped away from ASCII. Many of
>> the test cases for my ZanyBlue.Text localization support library
>> contain non-ASCII source, e.g., a test enumeration with identifiers
>> containing Greek characters:
> 
> This is definitely a small step in the right direction.  But I don't
> think it is anywhere as far at Poul-Henning Kamp would like it to go.  I
> have the impression that as long as our source files are only defined as
> a sequence of characters, we aren't there yet.  I'm a bit scared by the
> thought of a source code being defined both at the file level (for
> compatibility) and as a 2D (3D?) visual structure (for editing and
> inspection).

Historically syntax was understood as a spoken language concept.
Biologically the only way spoken language can exist is as a sequence of
elements, i.e. 1D.

A machine language theoretically need not to be spoken. But practically
nobody managed to come with anything universally usable at 2D level.

I think the way our brain processes images excludes 2D representations. 3D
is biologically excluded because our vision is basically 2D.

There is a simple criterion to determine which syntax has future and which
does not: the search engine test. Can you search for image content? You
cannot, you can only for words describing images. There are many reasons
why you cannot. I can name a mathematical one, 2D sets lack order.

-- 
Regards,
Dmitry A. Kazakov
http://www.dmitry-kazakov.de