From: Logical Language Group <lojbab>
Message-Id: <199501031613.AA27753@access2.digex.net>
Subject: Re: terseness
To: lojban@cuvmb.cc.columbia.edu (Lojban List)
Date: Tue, 3 Jan 1995 11:13:12 -0500 (EST)
Cc: lojbab@access.digex.net (Logical Language Group)
In-Reply-To: <199412230416.AA26194@nfs2.digex.net> from "Gerald Koenig" at Dec 22, 94 08:15:20 pm
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la djer. cusku di'e

> cusku la djan:

No, that means "Someone said John", a rather useless sentence, not to be
confused with "Someone said 'John'", which is "cusku zo djan.".
("cusku la djan." would make sense if "djan." is the name of an utterance.)

> >To paraphrase Dennis Ritchie,
> >
> >        "If you want English, you know where to find it."
> >

> Who is Dennis Ritchie, and what did he phrase?

The co-inventor of the programming language 'C'.  At one point in C's early
development, {lo} users were making requests for various enhancements to the
language, which would (in Ritchie's opinion) spoil its {integritas}, or
"clean-ness".  Making an implicit comparison to a then-much-used, far more
baroque language, he retorted:

	If you want PL/I, you know where to find it.

This saying is rather well-known in the hacker community.

-- 
John Cowan		sharing account <lojbab@access.digex.net> for now
		e'osai ko sarji la lojban.