From owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Mon Apr 26 13:04:51 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5C37D16A4CF for ; Mon, 26 Apr 2004 13:04:51 -0700 (PDT) Received: from priv-edtnes46.telusplanet.net (defout.telus.net [199.185.220.240]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id ED26643D5F for ; Mon, 26 Apr 2004 13:04:50 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cpressey@catseye.mine.nu) Received: from catseye.biscuit.boo ([154.5.85.228]) by priv-edtnes46.telusplanet.netSMTP <20040426200450.TNST12438.priv-edtnes46.telusplanet.net@catseye.biscuit.boo>; Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:04:50 -0600 Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 13:03:14 -0700 From: Chris Pressey To: Rahul Siddharthan Message-Id: <20040426130314.516a54ba.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> In-Reply-To: <20040426182026.GA29196@online.fr> References: <20040425215837.3f4708fe.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> <20040426094335.GA7578@online.fr> <20040426102844.11faaf90.cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> <20040426182026.GA29196@online.fr> Organization: Cat's Eye Technologies X-Mailer: Sylpheed version 0.9.10 (GTK+ 1.2.10; i386-portbld-freebsd4.9) Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Beginning C++ in FreeBSD X-BeenThere: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Non technical items related to the community List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 20:04:51 -0000 On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:20:26 -0400 Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > Chris Pressey said on Apr 26, 2004 at 10:28:44: > > Rahul Siddharthan wrote: > > > Chris Pressey wrote: > > > > > A single Greek word for which there isn't an equivalent word > > > > > in English-- and I mean exact equivalent, including all the > > > > > possible meanings and nuances that this word can express in > > > > > the Greek language-- should be enough as an example, right? > > > > > > > > Unfortunately, no, it's not enough. > > > > > > > > A single Greek word for which there isn't an equivalent English > > > > word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, essay, book, or library would > > > > be enough though. > > > > > > Which has very little relevance to programming languages. > > > > I disagree; I think the parallel to optimization in different > > languages is quite strong. > > The question was whether you can do something in one language that you > can't in another. If one interprets that your way (wanting an example > of a word in Greek that can't be expressed by an entire library in > English), the answer is clearly no. If one talks about conciseness > and optimisation, obviously that's a different question. But optimization *was* the original topic which spawned the question. My "challenge" was, in part, trying to illustrate that things do not get lost in translation because languages are *non-equivalent* (Danny's / Sapir & Whorf's original claim) but because they *optimize differently*. This certainly seems (to me) to apply to human and programming languages alike. -Chris