I agree with FoxtrotUniform; I also think of orthogonality mostly in terms of the mathematical definition. But I want to expand on those orthogonal vectors. Take a counterexample: say you have two features that interact. Like perl's for loop and the magical while diamond while(<>). Now try to lay those two features out in a plane at right angles to each other, so that they become the x and y axes of a two-dimensional space. Notice how if you use one feature, you can't use the other feature in exactly the same way. You want to use the default $_ variable from the while loop, but oops -- you're inside the for loop and it aliased $_ to something else. You can still use the full power of both constructs, but you have to modify your use of one to accommodate the other. Going back to the axes, moving on one axis also moves you on the other.

It's like describing colors using "redness" and "maroonness". If you increase the maroonness of a color, you affect the redness. You can still get any color you want, but you have to adjust how you use both features at the same time. Visually, they would be two axes that have something other than 90 degrees between them.

One thing I'm noticing from others' comments in this thread is that people seem to think of perl as orthogonal. Bull! Y'all just want to say that because you've been trained that orthogonality is always good, and therefore perl must be orthogonal. Perl is one of the least orthogonal programming languages I know. It's still far more orthogonal than any human language I know, which raises an interesting question: why are human languages, which are much easier to mutate and have much lower backwards-compatibility requirements, not mathematically beautiful and orthogonal?

I venture that orthogonality of expression is unnatural to us meat brains. The mathematical advantages are real enough that we make programming languages as orthogonal as we can tolerate, but those languages that sacrifice intuitive expressibility at the altar of orthogonality are the niche languages that are largely ignored, their fanatical followers notwithstanding.

I'm not saying orthogonality is bad. It's not; it's absolutely necessary for large-scale development, and it's the best way of reducing the raw amount of stuff you have to keep in your head at one time to use a language. (Think of the English grammatical rules for past participles -- is it "have drank"? "have drunk"? "drinken"?) But we don't think of things as tasting 20% salty, 8% bitter, 32% sweet, etc. We just think it tastes like chicken.

Update:Oh, right. You're not tilly, are you? All the colors and blinking lights and voices in my head confused me.

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

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