On Mon, Jun 13, 2011 at 4:02 PM, BGB <cr88...@gmail.com> wrote: > Consider what it'd be like if we didn't represent code as text... and > represented it maybe as series of ideograms or icons (TileScript nod). > Syntax errors don't really crop up any more, do they? Given a slightly nicer > User Interface than tilescript, you could still type your code, (ie use the > keyboard to fast-select tokens), but the computer won't "validate" any input > that isn't in its "dictionary" of known possible syntactically correct items > given whatever context you're in.
I think "Tiles prevent syntax errors" is a red herring. Sure, you can prevent stupid typos by offering only tiles with correctly spelled keywords, but that's not really a major problem in ordinary experience. The more pernicious errors aren't especially affected one way or the other by tile-based systems. (You could just as accurately say that strongly-typed systems prevent errors.) > given that most non-Chinese can't read Chinese writing, despite that many of > these characters do actually resemble crude line-art drawings of various > things and ideas. It is a common linguistic misperception that there is some one-to-one correspondence between an ideogram and the idea it represents. The english letter "A" was originally a drawing of an ox-head. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A). It is as accurate to say that English letters resemble "crude line-art drawings" as to say that Chinese ideograms do. > and meanwhile, many Asian countries either have shifted to, or are in the > process of shifting to, the use of phonetic writing systems (Koreans created > Hangul, Kanji gradually erodes in favor of Hiragana, ...). even in some > places in China (such as Canton) the traditional writing system is > degrading, with many elements of their spoken dialect being incorporated > into the written language. This is also playing fast and loose with linguistics. Let's be wary of drawing analogies to fields where we are not expert. --scott -- ( http://cscott.net ) _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
