Re: American English (was: Bad coding standards)

[Graeme <bitstorm@bigpond.com>]

John English wrote:

> Robert Dewar wrote:
> > Warning: non-Ada diversion
> >
> > P.S. is aesthetics an allowable spelling in American
> > english? I don't have an American dictionary at hand.
> > The OED only permits the use of "e" or the ae letter
> > which I can't even write in this ASCII character set,
> > but does not permit a separate a and e character.
>
> "Aesthetic" is, of course, perfectly normal for English English,
> but I've got no idea about American English. My copy of Chambers
> says this:
>   "aesthetic: orig. relating to perception by the senses: generally
>    relating to possessing, or pretending to, a sense of beauty;
>    artistic or affecting to be artistic."
>
> So I suppose aesthetic is the aesthetic spelling... ;-)
>
>   "esthesia, esthesiogen, etc. US spellings of aesthesia, etc."
>
> I trust Chambers implicitly (it's one of the few dictionaries that
> includes that wonderful word "taghairm") so if they are happy
> with "ae" rather than a ligature, I'm happy too. The OED is a
> bit stuffy about these things sometimes.
>
> How do Americans spell "anaesthetic"? Is it "anesthetic" perchance?
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>  John English              | mailto:je@brighton.ac.uk
>  Senior Lecturer           | http://www.it.bton.ac.uk/staff/je
>  Dept. of Computing        | ** NON-PROFIT CD FOR CS STUDENTS **
>  University of Brighton    |    -- see http://burks.bton.ac.uk
> -----------------------------------------------------------------

Only half-off topic... off this topic anyway, but John - your burks
resource for students
(in the vernacular) rocks... it is very good... excellent... as is your
Ada textbook...
one or two dud links on the burks site though - the motorola emulator
for PC comes to mind

Aesthetics (like, wayyyy off topic) - in philosophy, aesthetics applies
to the mind... in a round-about-way
- so though we may say that something is beautiful as we perceive it...
and attribute
aesthetic merit to that entity or object... philosophy looks a lot into
into the relationship
between our perceptions and that which we believe we perceive... which
has pretty well
bugger-all to do with ada or programming... perhaps.  Some
mathematicians "know"
when a theory (or solution to a theory, whatever) is correct by the
innate beauty of
that aesthetic entity they perceive in their mind's eye... I imagine
that a (good) programmer
also knows when their solution is on the right track because of some
symmetry or harmony to the system
under analysis or construction... perhaps Ada makes this mental
visualisation/comprehension a little
more intuitive by its architecture ?  As a program under analysis or
construction is itself an object of conscious
(and unconscious ?) apprehension, perhaps you hard-core professionals
intuit your way to the best solutions to a problem
by the most "attractive" possible solution ?  Which begs my question:
"Is a symmetrical (in the sense of harmonious,
well-ordered, coherent) design also an effective one ?"   I don't
know... I am just a lowly student.... drowning in technical
documentation with no end in sight.

I will be offline for a while... so - no more of my utter irrelevancies
for a while...
but i do enjoy reading the technical discussions... thanks, all... :-)
:-)

G