Re: don't { use Perl }

we can more readily and more reliably express and specify such sequences of states

That's what I said upteem replies ago. We are the speakers. But the computer (by means of a compiler or interpreter) is the audience. It's not the main form of communication between people. If you don't believe, come to YAPC and visit some talks. You'll notice that the main language used by the speakers to communicate with the audience is English and not a computer language - Perl will only be used by the speakers to show the audience what to say to the computer.

Abigail

Comment on Re: don't { use Perl }

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Re: Re: don't { use Perl } by Anonymous Monk on Jun 10, 2002 at 18:26 UTC
We are the speakers. But the computer (by means of a compiler or interpreter) is the audience. I humbly but strongly disagree. You are the audience of your own Perl or C code even while you write it. That is why you choose to to specify the sequence of states you ultimately intend in a language more akin to your own higher level concepts (or at least a highly restricted and rule bound subset of such higher level concepts). The machine is not the audience of your C code. 'gcc' is not the audience of your C code. You, and potentially other humans, are the audience as well as the speaker. As high level as C or Perl is compared to machine code, it is vastly low level compared to English. It is no surprise that we choose to limit our use of C or Perl to specifying particular state sequences and choose higher level languages such as English to communicate in general.	[reply]
Re: Re: Re: don't { use Perl } by ignatz (Vicar) on Jun 10, 2002 at 18:33 UTC
If the target of the language is humans, how come when people ask for help with the language, they don't use Perl, but instead ask their questions in English? People looking at other peoples code are looking at it not as a target of the language, but as another potential speaker. BTW, How long do we continue in this thread before the guy in the armor comes up and hits us all over the head with a big fish? ()-() \"/ `	[reply]