Re: [stack] things

Le Wed, 4 Mar 2009 12:05:45 -0800,
Don Groves <[email protected]> s'exprima ainsi:

> On Mar 4, 2009, at 2:21 AM, spir wrote:
> 
> > Hello concatenators,
> >
> > All those talks about concatenativity let me "dream" about a tiny  
> > language designed only to exhibit some properties -- or the lack of  
> > them. An attempt to have a base of concrete ;-) facts to reason.
> > Here a kind of informal description I wish you experimented language  
> > designers will comment & criticize; before I really start a foolish  
> > implementation. It may be written in Io (using a modified version of  
> > IoPEG, see http://code.google.com/p/iopeg/), for I'm learning this  
> > language.
> > Then I intend to explore how modifications will let the language get  
> > or lose this one or that one property.
> 
> You are now officially hooked! No other programming paradigm
> in existence (that I've heard of anyway) has created as many new
> forms of itself as this one. It's like a virus that takes up residence
> in a person's brain and can never be driven out -- it can only be
> placated by writing one of your own. This is the source of the old
> statement: "When you've seen one Forth, you've seen one Forth."

Maybe I was born with such a virus... Have always loved exploring and designing things. Languages are a wonderful playing field, imo, for they have this exciting complexity level: complex enough to be a world worth exploring and still "catchable" by human brains.
[Natural languages are much more complex indeed, still we all know at least one of them -- cf. Chomsky's competence) but this happens implicitely ; PLs require expliciteness which leads to abstract difficulty instead.]

> --
> don

denis
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