From bob@RATTLESNAKE.COM Thu Jan 24 16:02:26 2002 Return-Path: X-Sender: bob@rattlesnake.com X-Apparently-To: lojban@yahoogroups.com Received: (EGP: mail-8_0_1_3); 25 Jan 2002 00:02:25 -0000 Received: (qmail 68734 invoked from network); 24 Jan 2002 23:58:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (216.115.97.167) by m2.grp.snv.yahoo.com with QMQP; 24 Jan 2002 23:58:48 -0000 Received: from unknown (HELO localhost) (140.186.114.245) by mta1.grp.snv.yahoo.com with SMTP; 24 Jan 2002 23:58:46 -0000 Received: by rattlesnake.com via sendmail from stdin id (Debian Smail3.2.0.114) for lojban@yahoogroups.com; Thu, 24 Jan 2002 23:58:40 +0000 (UTC) Message-Id: Date: Thu, 24 Jan 2002 23:58:40 +0000 (UTC) To: me@nellardo.com Cc: lojban@yahoogroups.com In-reply-to: (message from Brook Conner on Thu, 24 Jan 2002 16:31:18 -0500) Subject: Re: lojban as a programming language [was Re: [lojban] Lojban for lay programmers] References: From: "Robert J. Chassell" Reply-To: bob@rattlesnake.com X-Yahoo-Group-Post: member; u=810561 > 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. Erm, I'm having trouble parsing out the intended meaning of that sentence out of context. My apologies. The context is that of non-programmers. The fear is that we will do what I and you want to do, which is focus on issues of Lojban, and forget others. There is a tension between three factors: formalism, expressiveness, and facility. Please keep on with this! I look at myself as being a person bringing something new to a group who may not care about Lojban but who might have funding and motivation, which makes this process more than a mere dream. The problem as I see it, is the group will be mostly `old line' computer people who don't care about speakable languages such as Lojban. It is worth figuring out the problems with Lojban as a programming language (or as many programming languages), since some of these people will know much more about programming than I and will immediately think of the problems ... but they will not the benefits. Indeed, I have a request: please come up with every problem you can think of (as well as every advantage). Although I expect my level of knowledge will be just right for this event, I like to have all the `ammunition', to use another metaphor, that I can have. The language should be clean and formally correct, ...(but as a consequence, expressing interesting things is amazingly verbose). Yes, and people, especially programmers, hate the verbose. lojban's syntax is arguably a good balance between formalism, expressiveness, and facility. The trick is to get the semantics to be the same. I agree -- but to convey that thought -- that is more difficult... No - don't break one word == one meaning. Computers will want that anyway. Go through a revision process for the semantics - prototype, .... OK. At this stage, I don't think we will get beyond the concept of a `prototype' anyhow. (In this case, I used two different meanings of `prototype', the one being something `you can start from' and the other being something `that a programmer thinks is very much a beginning'.) -- Robert J. Chassell bob@rattlesnake.com Rattlesnake Enterprises http://www.rattlesnake.com