Re: [NOISE] Curly braces [was Re: Curl]

[Vladimir G Ivanovic <address@hidden>]

"DS" == Dan Sugalski <dan@sidhe.org> writes:

  DS> For most folks, postfix languages are a downright hindrance. It
  DS> really is an alien way of thinking about problems. Not that the
  DS> procedural languages are dead-on, but usually they match better
  DS> than things like Forth. (Don't get me wrong, I really like Forth,
  DS> but it's the language that sets off the most cognitive dissonance
  DS> for me. Worse even than Lisp, and that's not meant as a shot at
  DS> Lisp, either)

I'd like to second Dan's observation. Although I believe that Forth, ML,
and Lisp/Scheme are "better" languages from a theoretical point of
view,[1] I also believe that one of the reasons for Java's popularity is
that it more closely matches the imperative way we actually behave: we
perform actions on objects for their side effects, e.g. toasting a
bagel. (Recall that one of Gosling's previous creations was NeWS, a
PostScript-like display system, so he was no stranger to postfix
notation.)

--- Vladimir

[1] In theory, practice and theory are the same; in practice, they're
    different. -- Author unknown

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Vladimir G. Ivanovic                        http://leonora.org/~vladimir
2770 Cowper St.                                         vladimir@acm.org
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