On 02/28/2011 09:50 PM, bearophile wrote:
spir:
Language design meets ecology...
A feature that's good in Python may be bad in D, or not having a feature in
Python may be bad, while missing it in D may be good. When you judge how much
good a language feature is, you must take a look at how the feature interacts
with all the other features of a language. Well designed languages have most of
their features well co-adapted to each other. The features of a language
interact with each other like species in a biota. Ecology is one of the topics
I have studied, and it's useful for quite more than just biology. Today ecology
is very important for medicine too (evolution of virulence), to understand and
fight cancer (cancer cells are alive and different, they create a different
ecosystem that's egoistical in a different way, etc).
To design a language you need some sociological thinking too beside ecology,
because the community of people that use a language are almost as important as
the language grammar rules.
Same about systemics.
Denis
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vita es estrany
spir.wikidot.com
