Something on the recent "discussion" titled "Natural Language Wins" got me thinking: a lot of people seem to have the opinion the language a person communicates in locks them into a certain way of thinking.
I'm interested in this with respect to programming languages. I've encountered numerous programmers in my life who only seem capable of thinking procedurally when it comes to programming, and yet can easily think non-procedurally in other affairs (such as using objects in their daily life, or writing maths functions). Before I learned LISP at all, a lot of people told me it'd change the way I thought, but all it really did was make me aware of another programming language which was less locked in than the others. I don't think in language. I think in visual and feeling/thought form-patterns - they're faster than language because they're smaller than language, and they come before the language rendering is formed. Perhaps I used to think in language when I only knew one language, but I don't remember doing so. This is how I program, too. I find that programming languages express the patterns I build better or worse, but I don't feel I'm hedged into a way of thinking by the language - I find the language dictates what's possible to express a lot of the time, but I don't see this as the language limiting ME, rather what I can express is limited by the language. (ie in the latter I remain limitless, in the formed, I would be limited). Same thing in natural language. For example, this paragraph is poorly expressed in english without a lot of work. [FOR ME], [easy+] [express myself] [precisely++] [in esperanto] than [in english]. (for example). In LISP, it's the same thing. LISP is "perfectly" precise. It's completely unambiguous. Of course, this makes it incredibly difficult to use or understand sometimes. What I wonder is, is it possible to build a series of tiny LISPs on top of each other such that we could arrive at incredibly precise and yet also incredibly concise, but [[easily able to be traversed] meanings]. This was/is the aim of the STEPS project, was it not? I continue to grapple with this idea and its implementation(s). The ramifications are that one could replace any part of the system because one could understand any part of it, but also that it would enable a learning not possible by any other means because it would be "able to be inspected/introspected". Thus, using would become learning would become programming. This is one of my most passionate aims, but unfortunately daily "grind work to pay the bills" generally takes away from my efforts. Julian _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
