 | | 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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(...) "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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| | 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: 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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| | 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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(...) 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 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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(...) 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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(...) 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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(...) I'd put correctness above maintainability, in the sense that, although maintainable code needs to be able to stay correct, code ought to be correct in the first place. And above correctness, the code ought to be solving the right problems (...) (25 years ago, 13-Jul-99, to lugnet.off-topic.debate, lugnet.off-topic.geek)
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