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=-1.3 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_00,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,fc050a66c3b5d87d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public X-Google-Thread: 1094ba,86e8c626be2471ae X-Google-Attributes: gid1094ba,public From: "James Giles" Subject: Re: F9X twister & ADA (was: n-dim'l vectors) Date: 2000/04/11 Message-ID: #1/1 X-Deja-AN: 609715288 References: <8cctts$ujr$1@nnrp1.deja.com> <38EA0440.1ECBC158@ncep.noaa.gov> <38ED4ECA.ADB698C9@sdynamix.com> <38F28A85.53809F39@sdynamix.com> X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3612.1700 X-Complaints-To: abuse@worldnet.att.net X-Trace: bgtnsc06-news.ops.worldnet.att.net 955472047 12.74.2.96 (Tue, 11 Apr 2000 16:54:07 GMT) Organization: AT&T Worldnet NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 11 Apr 2000 16:54:07 GMT Newsgroups: comp.lang.fortran,comp.lang.ada Date: 2000-04-11T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Dale Stanbrough wrote in message ... >James Gilesm wrote: > >> It's very BAD language design to use the same keywords for >> several distinct language features. > >I'm sorry but i would have to strongly disagree here. People >are masters at contextual interpretation of the semantics of >words. There are so many words in English that are decoded >based on context (even pronunciation!) that I doubt this is >really an issue. You are welcome to disagree. But, conclusions drawn from how people use natural languages are not necessarily even applicable to programming languages. The reason that people get by with multiple meanings, and manage to extract the meaning anyway, is that natural languages are quite verbose and contain lots of redundancies (which give extra clues) and people can ask for something to be restated if it's not clear. In programming languages, syntax with multiple different meanings often leads to long learning curves for the language. And (at least in the case of C, with which I'm more familiar) it can lead to subtle bugs that are hard to find and correct. Most language designers will avoid such whenever possible. Since programming languages are much smaller than natural languages, it's nearly *always* possible to avoid lots of distinct uses for any given syntax. There's no need to ever introduce an opportunity for confusion. -- J. Giles