From bob@RATTLESNAKE.COM Thu Jan 24 12:05:52 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: bob@rattlesnake.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 24 Jan 2002 20:05:52 -0000 Received: (qmail 83593 invoked from network); 24 Jan 2002 20:05:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m3.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 24 Jan 2002 20:05:51 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO localhost) (140.186.114.245) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 24 Jan 2002 20:05:50 -0000 Received: by rattlesnake.com via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.114) for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Thu, 24 Jan 2002 20:05:42 +0000 (UTC) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 20:05:42 +0000 (UTC) To: me@nellardo.com Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com In-reply-to: <267B5602-1102-11D6-9015-003065B787D6@nellardo.com> (message from Brook Conner on Thu, 24 Jan 2002 14:39:58 -0500) Subject: Re: lojban as a programming language [was Re: [lojban] Lojban for lay programmers] References: <267B5602-1102-11D6-9015-003065B787D6@nellardo.com> From: "Robert J. Chassell" Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810561 Okay, quickie - if they're considering Emacs Lisp, they should look at Scheme instead. Guile (guile.org) is a nicely embeddable scheme interpreter. Yes -- I agree. Now, back to lojban. This was something I brought up a couple years back - lojban used as a programming language. It especially shines as a spoken programming language, because its phonemic structure matches lexical structure.... Yes! No, the tricky part is not parsing lojban - as you point out, the yacc grammar does that. The tricky part is the *semantics*. Very true. For example, when evaluating a lojban sentence, do you use strict evaluation or lazy evaluation? This is where Lojban begins to illuminate programming questions, but as Tommaso Toffoli says: ... Perhaps its greatest scientific challenge will be not to confuse the needs and resources of this specialized community with those of the larger community it addresses. But we will need to settle these questions. So we will have to make the choice. Or do it two different ways, initially, and break the `single meaning' rule. > (2) able to be used (with a subset of the > vocabulary, but the same grammar) as a computer scripting language, Another problem of semantics is choosing the subset of the vocabulary and making sure the user knows what it is. Are you going for an imperative model? Ha! :-) Another good question! ... designing the semantics ... is not as simple as it might first seem. Right. But can you think of any other potentially speakable language, suitable for non-programmers, that is better? I find it hard to imagine many of my non-computer friends wanting to learn Scheme, Guile, or Python. (It is also hard to imagine them wanting to learn Lojban, but it seems less hard, since it is a full language and they would have more motivations to learn it than merely dealing with their computers, which they hate anyhow.) -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com