Re: Ada generics

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

On Tue, 02 Jan 2007 13:33:07 +0100, Georg Bauhaus wrote:

> On Tue, 2007-01-02 at 12:11 +0100, Dmitry A. Kazakov wrote:
>  
>>> Should we deny problem domain facts just so that we have very
>>> simple rules for parsers? Where German is written, there is a
>>> simple rule: For writing "ß" in upper case, use "SS".
>> 
>> This is not a domain of the programming language,
> 
> Programming languages use natural language words for good
> reasons, for example, because we can think and communicate
> more clearly referring to things using descriptive names.

Come on, why on earth "water" is a descriptive name of water. I find "вода"
far more descriptive! (:-)) Natural language words (even pictographs)
describe absolutely nothing but themselves. 

> Programming problems cannot reasonably described in full
> using only formal symbolism.

So what? Maybe mathematical analysis cannot be described in first-order
logic, but that does not mean that "fairy wear boots" were a statement in
either.

> Why give up descriptive names just because natural language
> words can be slightly more difficult to parse than words
> tailored to the needs of the most stupid computer programs?

Why give up? It is not a language business. The language treats *any* names
equally. Any application domain meaning of names is outside the language.

>>> That's not too hard a challenge to computer science in my view,
>>> but I'll leave that to psychologists to answer when it comes
>>> to the views of actual computer scientists. :-)
>> 
>> Simplicity of implementation does not justify doing wrong things! (:-))
> 
> Indeed, this is why I like to be able to write identifiers
> that are written correctly,

Mathematicians use much less descriptive identifies being absolutely free
to use Latin, Greek and Hebrew alphabets. Yet nobody even tried to use full
words. Why?

> and not wrong just because we are
> given only 7bit-ASCII identifiers as written in
> Computeranglosaxonian. :-)

Yet another "German" rule: "a_b" = "ab"? In that spirit, what about
middle-endian integer literals and postfix forms for all function calls?
(:-))

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