> > How? Learning how to use keywords has nothing to do with what
> > keywords are in existence.
> Just like the difficulty in learning the road rules has nothing to do
> with how many rules there are. Hmmm, no. That's a bad example. Um ...
> The difficulty of learning how to write in a particular language has
> nothing to do with how many symbols there are in its alphabet. Hmmm, no,
BTW: You were actually close on your second example. The
difficulty of learning how to write in a particular language DOES have
very little to do with how many symbols there are in its alphabet.
(Writing well is a different matter - but you've got to know how to
write at all before you can move on to quality.) But learning the
basic manipulation of the symbols is, mostly, independent of the
number of symbols themselves. Any linguist will tell you that
learning the grammar of a language, although certainly not unrelated
to the syntax, is quite different from knowing the syntax of a
language. Aside from needing to know some very basic syntax in order
to get a start on the grammar, the syntax is pretty much arbitrary and
has little bearing on the learning of the grammar. Also, while we're
on this particular subject <grin>, having more syntax can actually be
more beneficial to expressing oneself than having less syntax. So if
you really want to follow through on the written/spoken word analogy,
we should be pushing for more keywords not less. (Hmmm....)
Jason.
