Walter Bright Wrote:

> torhu wrote:
>> Walter Bright wrote:
<snip>
>>> 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.
<snip>
> 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>.

Interesting.  But where does that put Esperanto, with its basic vocabulary being a mixture of languages but having compound words (and translations of Latin abbreviations) all its own?

Stewart.

Ary Manzana wrote:
> 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

Man, I am the only programmer to actually (moderately) like the Java language? :P

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D

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>.

Huh? I'm under the impression that that also happens a lot in other languages. In fact it likely happens much more often in other languages, who borrow a lot of *english* words in these modern times. ;)

-- 
Bruno Medeiros - MSc in CS/E student
http://www.prowiki.org/wiki4d/wiki.cgi?BrunoMedeiros#D

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> [...]
> Man, I am the only programmer to actually (moderately) like the Java language? :P

I think for many people it's language envy because Java is so unreasonably successful.  For others it's just plain language parochialism.  I happen to think Java is a great language, and obviously researchers love how easy it is to extend.  That doesn't mean I think Java is always the most appropriate language or that it doesn't have any warts, but the same is true for C++, D, Perl, and any other language you can think of.

Dave

I think
> languages will slowly converge into one universal language being made up
> primarily of English (although its name may change).

My bets on chinese ;).

janderson wrote:
> 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

Bruno Medeiros wrote:
> Walter Bright wrote:
>> One reason English is successful is its shamelessness in adopting useful words and phrases from other languages. Sort of like what D does <g>.
> 
> Huh? I'm under the impression that that also happens a lot in other languages.

Yes, it does. But some actively work to try and prevent this.

> In fact it likely happens much more often in other languages, who borrow a lot of *english* words in these modern times. ;)

Sure, and I suspect that a language that refuses to do so is one that will fade away into irrelevance.

Bruno Medeiros escribió:
> Ary Manzana wrote:
>> 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
> 
> Man, I am the only programmer to actually (moderately) like the Java language? :P
> 

I like Java a lot because of all those things. Having seen the video about Java closures, and being a Java programmer for about six years I realize it has some drawbacks, and that some code is larger than it should. But, on the other hand, there are great tools that makes those problems fade away... (or makes you think so :-P)

Charlie wrote:
> I think
>  > languages will slowly converge into one universal language being made up
>  > primarily of English (although its name may change).
> 
> My bets on chinese ;).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chung_Kuo

Great series, but hard to track down (it's out of print).

Ary Manzana wrote:
> 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

Neither Java or English would have any chance of being successful if it was difficult to learn.  Of course there are better languages out there however what I'm saying is that less then 100 terms in D is extremely tiny by comparison to the monster that is English.

A learning language is great, I don't think D should have to be written in infinite speak just so new people can get it (there are other languages for that).  It should be written so that we can produce less bug prone code at a faster rate.   When you come across a term/grammar that you haven't seen before, you should be able to learn it from the surrounding code 90% of the time.

-Joel

Charlie wrote:
> I think
>  > languages will slowly converge into one universal language being made up
>  > primarily of English (although its name may change).
> 
> My bets on chinese ;).

You may be right.  One interesting fact is that China has the biggest speaking English population in the world.


> 
> janderson wrote:
>> 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