1. Sapir-Whorf
- Posted by Ryan Zerby <ryanz at NETREX.COM>
Mar 08, 1998
-
Last edited Mar 09, 1998
My take on a lot of the semantic discussion here is based on the
sapir-whorf hypothesis: The language we use affects the way we think. I
guess I'm a bit of a purist...
You are programming in Euphoria, not C, not Pascal. Don't think in C
and Pascal. Think in Euphoria. So far, most of the complaints have been
that euphoria is verbose compared to the compiled languages. So? It also
fits on a floppy, and nearly trivial to learn. For me, part of the
joy of programming in a new language is the new way of thinking. For
example, try programming in Intercal. Truly leave your world behind. There are
so many different programming tasks that it's impossible to get a language
that excells in them all.
I think we should look for things we can't say in Euphoria, and fix those.
So far, Euphoria is doing wonderfully! It has a small vocabulary and an
easy to learn grammar, yet is rich in the range of expressions that can
be performed. I believe it could outstrip many of today's more popular
languages. Once I can figure out a few key idioms, I'm going to try and
use it as my primary language. In particular, I do a lot of internet work,
and so need to figure out how to open and manipulate TCP/IP sockets with
Euphoria. I've been trying to use Winsock2 with minor success (and
major failure). However, I don't know that it's necessary to suggest
that Euphoria have sockets built into it. Part of the success of Euphoria
is it's well chosen core. Adding exceptions to the base is silly. That's
why you have the include feature. That's why euphoria lets you link to
DLLs and use machine code. It's extremely expandable.
So, there you have my take. I would like to see Euphoria ported to other
platforms, and would be willing to take part in this port (Specifically
to Unix and X, as it's my main platform). Also, a Euphoria compiler would
be nice as there are applications where it doesn't make sense to run
an interpreter first (I don't even know if you can). For example, a
Euphoria Shell, or some aspects of an OS. I would like to see euphoria
as a "Network Language" as it's far superior to Java and perl, in my opinion.
--
Ryan Zerby, Senior Programmer ryanz at netrex.com
"Tonight we shall both get fucked up together but we shall embark
on very different journeys messed separate rooms."
