🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <24044@megaron.cs.arizona.edu> gudeman@cs.arizona.edu (David Gudeman) writes:
   Also, in my usage, just because everyone doesn't use a language that
   doesn't prove that it isn't universal.  English is fairly universal as
   a means of expression but it's not universal in the sense that
   everyone speaks it.  When I say "universal" I'm refering to the first
   sense, that it is adequate for most purposes of expression, not that
   it is actually used by everyone.

Ah, the wonders of the Universal Language English. We can make it mean
pretty much what we want it to mean. That's not acceptable for
programming languages, of course. There's a higher authority than
people - the various language translators. If those don't largely
agree on what a specific text means, then the language is pretty much
worthless as a programming language.

I claim there are already a number of languages that are "universal"
in that sense, as there are people who use them for most (or all)
purposes of expression. Of course, if you allow "adequate" to be even
more weakly defined than "universal", then tapes for turing machines
are the first such example.

No, to be universal, a language must provide access to all forms of
expression of sufficient quality that a large percentage of
programmers will be willing to use it instead of whatever they're
using now. That's a non-negiotable portion of the definition of
"adequate."

	<mike

--
Kiss me with your mouth.				Mike Meyer
Your love is better than wine.				mwm@relay.pa.dec.com
But wine is all I have.					decwrl!mwm
Will your love ever be mine?