 | | Re: Perl rules!
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(...) Hey, I'm going to have to take issue with that. English can be a very beautiful language. It can also be an ugly language, but that doesn't mean that it can't be amazing poetry in the right hands. So actually it's a pretty good analogy. :) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Perl rules!
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(...) Another great strength of English is that through years of borrowing ideas from other languages, you end up with many ways to express the same idea, allowing the flexibilty both to make things beautiful and to find just the precise way to (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Perl rules!
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(...) It also means there are 50 thousand rules to learn, and 50 million exceptions to those rules. At least we don't have to cojugate (sp?) anything... Steve (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Perl rules!
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(...) Luckily human beings are very good at that. In fact, the rules seem to be mostly descriptive -- we naturally say things a certain way, and then retroactively we look and say, "ok, that's the right way to say it because of such-and-such-rule". (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Perl rules!
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(...) It's a good thing human minds are good at language -- can you imagine if parents actually had to teach their children to speak? That would be painful. Believe me, I know -- I tried for 4 years. *Then* my kid decided he was ready to talk. But (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Perl rules!
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(...) I was that way too. That's why god invented spellcheck. (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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[removed lugnet.off-topic.debate from ng-post list] (...) I had 2 years of German and didn't end up learning too much of it because it was from books and tapes and a little bit of conversation in class. I can still write some simple sentences and (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) "What The--?! Why don't we use words we already know?" And thus the evil in Grace Hopper begat COBOL. ... Can you imagine the spelling errors that would pop up in code if programming languages were spoken? :-, Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) Hey, don't be dissin' COBOL for that :-( It served a purpose in its time (~40 years ago) and it's not COBOL's fault that it's still being used. (...) LOL! (OTOH, I've written 'printf' a couple of times when I'd meant to write 'print' :-) (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) I have to admit, I'm something of an anti-COBOL bigot. That has obviously clouded my judgement, but I can't see what COBOL could do that FORTRAN wasn't already doing more cleanly and efficiently, on the same platforms. Cheers, - jsproat (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) Well, hey, aren't we all -- and as well we should all be (IMHO) in 1999, especially with all this Double-Byte COBOL, OO-COBOL, and COBOL-Java stuff going on as perverse attempts to keep COBOL alive and milking the Y2K cash cow. But I thought (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) Oy vey, der camps. I alvays vorget der camps. Und der suits und der schlide-rules and der schtuff. (...) Wasn't COBOL started in 1959? By the time COBOL was developed, my dad (1) was writing FORTRAN compilers for whatever platform he needed (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) I think that's when it was first released, right? Hopper began working on it much earlier than that, yes? 1955 was what I read somewhere a couple hours ago. (...) Hey cool -- so you're a second-gen too? We'll have to invent a secret handshake. (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) I don't know the original specs for either language, but I *think* COBOL's data-description capabilities were much richer than FORTRAN's. Steve (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) Sometimes I'm more reasonable. Sometimes I'm not. Not the world's best parent, but far from the worst. My children are both very not-ordinary, but in completely different ways. Steve (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) Heh heh heh. What was your parental-unit (1) coding? My dad was basically a civvie contractor for the Army for a good chunk of his career, writing software for calibrating RADAR and RADOT hardware, though he did work at the Hanford Nuclear (...) (25 years ago, 14-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) job security baby. Hey, did you hear about the new Object Oriented COBOL? It's true. They've come up with a name for it! ADD 1 TO COBOL. (25 years ago, 16-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) FORTRAN in the same sentence as clean and efficient, without a negative. *shakes head* must be a misparse. Jasper (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: Perl rules!
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(...) *shake* not quite true. HAve you ever learned a language foreign to you? I'v ebeen lucky enough to learn English as virtually a second mother language (early start, mostly), but I've also learnt French, German, Latin and ancient Greek (to (...) (25 years ago, 22-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | Re: learning languages (was: Re: Perl rules!)
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(...) It's a relative thing. Back then, Algol 60 hadn't even been developed, and FORTRAN hadn't been muddied up with more stuff. (why, I remember when I had to do my programs on punched cards... once you punch it. there's NO undo!... and I had to (...) (25 years ago, 25-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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| | "Why, in my day..."
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(...) Heh heh, I think I remember hearing about someone who took a precision knife to a punched and changed a D into an E by altering the lowest order bit. IIRC, punched cards were easier to do that sort of thing to than paper tape because punched (...) (25 years ago, 25-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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