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



At 12:33 PM 11/30/2001 -0500, jmarshall@mak.com wrote:
>Don't get me wrong, I love my HP calculator, but a postfix language
>isn't a panacea.

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

Maybe the bigger issue is the mixing of software engineering and software 
research. (I hesitate to call it 'computer science', as then the sigquote 
Simon pops up occasionally would be appropriate) The tools and 
methodologies used to design and implement production-scale chemical plants 
aren't at all like the tools and methodologies used to do research 
chemistry. Neither, perhaps, are the tools used to do software research 
appropriate for software engineering.

					Dan

--------------------------------------"it's like this"-------------------
Dan Sugalski                          even samurai
dan@sidhe.org                         have teddy bears and even
                                      teddy bears get drunk