When I am talking about a programming language, what I mean by orthogonal is something close to "tiny". C, for example, is really an itty bitty language. This doesn't mean that you are rigidly set in the number of ways you can do something - it means that you are given the most basic tools, rudimentary access to things, the compiler / interpreter assumes nothing. You are given tight control over every aspect of the problem - and are expected to maintain all of those little aspects.

An orthogonal language doesn't "double up" - meaning that a tool does one thing, well. You don't get eval, AUTOLOAD, and the like. You get variables with strong typing, some mathematic operators, and strings are really arrays of characters, cause the compiler doesn't have a "string" type, but a "char" type. That is the essence of orthogonality - nothing but what you need, or what can build what you need.

Cheers,
Erik

In reply to Re: (OT) On Orthogonality by erikharrison
in thread (OT) On Orthogonality by demerphq

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