🚀 go-pugleaf

On Aug 23, 10:08 pm, "Paul J Kriha"
<paul.nospam.kr...@paradise.net.nz> wrote:

> > > I don't feel desparate, I have been quite happy with ABCDEF
> > > for the last 40 years.

> > Have you ever written C compiler?

> I wrote only small bits of it as a hobby in the later years when
> it was relatively easy. You know with YACC and other CC generators.

I am not sure YACC and other tools matter here.  It always infuriated
me that I had to use such clumsy gimmicks to distinguish numbers from
words. With both A and E available there are a lot of sequences of
characters that are both words and numbers (for lurkers - like FACED).
So we have to use those dumb zero-initial tricks. I was reduced in my
(non-standard) compilers to declaring any alphanumeric sequence that
could be read as a number WAS a number. When I wrote code I just made
sure there was a lower case letter in every name.

This all works - but elegant it ain't.

> I wrote more substantial parts of Algol 60 compiler in the mid-sixties
> which ended up in a full commercial use. And Lisp 1.5 in Algol, but
> in fully recursive Algol, Lisp was a piece of (very slowly running) cake.
> Admittedly, that didn't really make me worry too much about external
> representations of hex numbers.

I seem to have forgotten everything I ever knew about ALGOL 60. I seem
to remember it as a very sensible language.  LISP, on the other hand,
is more a state of mind than a language. Clever - but so far as I can
tell, useless.

> > Don't worry we can get along on ABCDEF - but separate symbols would
> > save a lot of fuss for a very small number of people.
>
> Have you ever used APL in anger?

I always have had an affection for natural language. APL is about as
far from natural language as you can get and still call what you have
something you can call a language. If somebody would build the
hardware it might make a good machine language.

My God - there is something even less like natural language than APL -
machine language.

I think it is a good idea to stick to natural language on sci.lang.

PS: I did try to make use of APL - but more in sorrow than anger.