Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2004 13:03:14 -0700 From: Chris Pressey <cpressey@catseye.mine.nu> To: Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> Cc: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Beginning C++ in FreeBSD 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>
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On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:20:26 -0400 Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> wrote: > Chris Pressey said on Apr 26, 2004 at 10:28:44: > > Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> 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
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