Andrei Alexandrescu (See Website For Email) wrote:
> David B. Held wrote:
>> Alexander Panek wrote:
>>> [...]
>>> You have a point, though the beauty & readability of D pretty much nullifies that. The syntax sugar that is added so far does not actually complicate the parsing so much, so D's syntax can still be seen as clean, IMHO.
>>
>> I think the ridiculous size of the front-end is a pretty good existence proof.  Take a look, Neal.
> 
> Take a look at Polyglot. Even Java syntax is heinous to parse.

Actually, D's front-end was a lot smaller than I was expecting.  Only 1.5 MB of C++ code, whereas g++ is almost 4 MB tarred & zipped. Granted, that includes a backend, but if I recall correctly, gcc's source is around 20 MB uncompressed (though with how many front-ends, I'm not sure).

Dave

Falk-Florian Henrich wrote:
> Am Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:16:08 -0700 schrieb janderson:
> 
>> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>> Personally I don't think D is anywhere near the threshold of having to
>> much.  Take a look at the most successful langugage (English), it keeps
>> getting bigger and bigger every day.  We just don't have enough syntax
>> to describe everything.
> 
> Without discussing what "successful" is supposed to mean in the realm of natural languages, I think the syntax of English is shrinking rather than growing. Plus, today's lingua franca is a tiny subset of English with a type discipline comparable to that of K&R C.
> 
> Apart from that, I agree with you that D's syntax is a lot easier to understand than that of C++.
> 
> Falk

By successful I mean most widely used, which is what we want D to become.

I guess, once a word is added to the English language it doesn't go away  easily.  English reached the 1-million mark last year.  I've heard that most people stick to around 2000 world in their everyday speak.  I think languages will slowly converge into one universal language being made up primarily of English (although its name may change).

I think programming languages and file formats will be one of the biggest driving forces behind this.  Since most people want technology and much of it is English at some level.

http://www.literacytrust.org.uk/Database/language.html

-Joel

janderson wrote:
> I guess, once a word is added to the English language it doesn't go away  easily.  English reached the 1-million mark last year.  I've heard that most people stick to around 2000 world in their everyday speak.  I think languages will slowly converge into one universal language being made up primarily of English (although its name may change).

What I read about English:

1,000,000 total number of words
30,000 vocabulary of college graduate
10,000 vocabulary of high school graduate
2,000 vocabulary of TV shows

What this tells me is one could become reasonably fluent in a language by learning just 2,000 words.

Walter Bright wrote:
> What this tells me is one could become reasonably fluent in a language by learning just 2,000 words.

Syntax is more like grammar than vocabulary.

-Jeff

Walter Bright Wrote:

<snip>
> What I read about English:
> 
> 1,000,000 total number of words
> 30,000 vocabulary of college graduate
> 10,000 vocabulary of high school graduate
> 2,000 vocabulary of TV shows
<snip>

But considering the possible interpretations of the word "word", are you sure they're all talking in the same units?

Stewart.

Stewart Gordon wrote:
> Walter Bright Wrote:
> 
> <snip>
>> What I read about English:
>>
>> 1,000,000 total number of words
>> 30,000 vocabulary of college graduate
>> 10,000 vocabulary of high school graduate
>> 2,000 vocabulary of TV shows
> <snip>
> 
> But considering the possible interpretations of the word "word", are you sure they're all talking in the same units?

Since it was one source, I presume it was using the same definition.

janderson escribió:
> Falk-Florian Henrich wrote:
>> Am Wed, 21 Mar 2007 08:16:08 -0700 schrieb janderson:
>>
>>> Jarrett Billingsley wrote:
>>> Personally I don't think D is anywhere near the threshold of having to
>>> much.  Take a look at the most successful langugage (English), it keeps
>>> getting bigger and bigger every day.  We just don't have enough syntax
>>> to describe everything.
>>
>> Without discussing what "successful" is supposed to mean in the realm of natural languages, I think the syntax of English is shrinking rather than growing. Plus, today's lingua franca is a tiny subset of English with a type discipline comparable to that of K&R C.
>>
>> Apart from that, I agree with you that D's syntax is a lot easier to understand than that of C++.
>>
>> Falk
> 
> By successful I mean most widely used, which is what we want D to become.

English is not succesful because of the language itself, but because of other reasons (power, articles, books). Just like Java is succesful but nowhere near because of the language (I guess VM, nice documentation system, IDEs).

Maybe D should consider becoming succesful by other means besides of the language itself? :-)

Ary

Ary Manzana wrote:
> English is not succesful because of the language itself, but because of other reasons (power, articles, books). Just like Java is succesful but nowhere near because of the language (I guess VM, nice documentation system, IDEs).

One reason English is successful is its shamelessness in adopting useful words and phrases from other languages. Sort of like what D does <g>.

Walter Bright wrote:
> Ary Manzana wrote:
>> English is not succesful because of the language itself, but because of other reasons (power, articles, books). Just like Java is succesful but nowhere near because of the language (I guess VM, nice documentation system, IDEs).
> 
> One reason English is successful is its shamelessness in adopting useful words and phrases from other languages. Sort of like what D does <g>.

This isn't quite true.  English is 'successful' because of the dominating position of the US, and earlier the UK.  People very rarely choose between languages based on how 'good' they are.  On the other hand, two thirds of the English vocabulary is supposed to originate from Latin.

torhu wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> Ary Manzana wrote:
>>> English is not succesful because of the language itself, but because of other reasons (power, articles, books). Just like Java is succesful but nowhere near because of the language (I guess VM, nice documentation system, IDEs).
>>
>> One reason English is successful is its shamelessness in adopting useful words and phrases from other languages. Sort of like what D does <g>.
> 
> This isn't quite true.  English is 'successful' because of the dominating position of the US, and earlier the UK.  People very rarely choose between languages based on how 'good' they are.  On the other hand, two thirds of the English vocabulary is supposed to originate from Latin.

I did say one reason - there are many. Some languages look inward, not wanting to accept foreign words. English, as you say, is mostly foreign words. Like the blob, English tends to absorb whatever it comes in contact with <g>.