Newsgroups: comp.lang.dylan
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From: Larry_Kyrala@bocaraton.ibm.com
Subject: Re: Popularity of a language
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Date: Tue, 20 Jun 1995 17:46:12 GMT
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In <19950611T125034Z@naggum.no>, erik@naggum.no (Erik Naggum) writes:
>this is a prevalent belief.  I can see that it seems to be true from what
>happens to language acceptance, but syntax is never a hard hurdle to
>overcome.  if it were, then syntactic disasters like C++ and Perl would not
>have any users.  it appears, however, that arbitrarily counter-intuitive
>syntaxes win big, and simple, clean syntaxes lose.  so, too, with Dylan.
>
>do you have any theory to explain this strangeness in public acceptance?


Only one, that the field of computer science is finally 
taking steps toward becoming a mature science.  There
is nothing *that* strange about C++'s syntax, nor I suspect
in Dylan's.  What is strange about them is that the underlying
power of their abstraction is not obvious at a low level,
any more than a differential equation versed in terms of
simple algebra would be.

However, to someone who knows differential equations,
both are obvious, even if the algebraic answer is less
conscise... less elegant.


The structures we seek to control and define are complex.
There is no reason to think that they can be "simplified" 
into one common language, for the simple reason that
languages evolve from their usage.  Different sciences all
have their "languages", with many dialects at different
levels, because their usage varies.

The need for this is apparent in mathematics, why not in
computer science?  I think it's because computer science
is a very young science, just beginning to realize what the
older sciences have known, that you cannot reduce certain
levels, because they are a factor of magnitude more intricate...
they require different and stronger abstractions, not
simply better macros.

Not everyone will or wants to understand these abstractions,
but there is certainly no obligation to make such power 
understandable without effort, without discipline... in fact,
I highly doubt whether such a thing is possible.  However,
we shouldn't remove the "simpler" dialects that we build
upon either.

Case in point:  the majority of C++ programmers continue to 
use it as a beefed up C... the underlying abstractions have been
missed entirely.  C++'s popularity has more to do with
the fact that it supports C, than any of C++'s superior
abstractions.



[<]
___________________________________________________________

  Larry Kyrala               Larry_Kyrala@bocaraton.ibm.com
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