Re: [stack] Concatenative versus Compositionality

On Dec 3, 2007, at 12:35 PM, Christopher Diggins wrote:

> That doesn't quite characterize my reasoning. The fact that there is
> uncertainty is not of concern to me. I am suggesting that the nature
> of these languages is not the concatenativeness (lets define this as
> meaning a language where whitespace corresponds to an operation)
> ...
>  What unifies the langauges
> so far labelled as concatenative is that they are compositional
> (whitespace denotes function composition).

Just a quick point: I think those are overly narrow definitions of  
concatenativity and compositionality if you include anything about  
"whitespace". Imagine a language where functions aren't entered as  
individual characters and concatenated via whitespace, but rather  
dragged off a palette of predefined functions and connected together  
like a jigsaw puzzle.  MIT's Scratch is works somewhat along these  
lines -- in fact, I've seen it described at least once as a  
"concatenative language for children":

http://llk.media.mit.edu/projects/scratch/help/images/variableSet.gif

It is easy to imagine Joy with a similar sort of graphical syntax;  
Quotation would work as the "forever" does in that example (albeit  
with the addition of an output like the other functions have).

- John