#10995 Jesse (3334 rep) | Q: Why do I feel the urge to flirt? (score: -3) | posted 1 hours ago by Mr. Tom (1 rep)

Matched regex(es) ["you\\W(really)?(need\\Wto|should)"]

#10993 Em C (5150 rep) | Q: Facebook Tagging (score: -1) | posted 2 hours ago by AwkwardMathematician (1 rep)

Matched regex(es) ["you\\W(really)?(need\\Wto|should)"]

@GypsySpellweaver I'm binge drinking Tropicana Pure Premium OJ

the one with lots of pulp in it ...

Ok.

@GypsySpellweaver you code in Python at all?

Nope. Never even looked at its syntax

All I know is that it enforces block indentation

me too ...

haha ... I see ...

i hear it's good for scientific computing ...

so ... kinda useful for me to pick up, I think ...

Weird thing, too. I like, and follow, block indentation very well, yet I don't want a compiler forcing it on me either.

I see ...

I think any language that has good number handling is good for scientific computing. Some things might be easier in one over others, but that one will, in turn be poor at some other aspects. In the same program.

yeah ...

If you want to do some really fancy mathematics, with some simple statements, you can try out APL. But the character set is a killer.

I see ...

How about Haskell?

and, how long would it take to learn APL, you think?

3 months?

Don't know Haskell, not even as well as Python.

Depending on what you mean by "learn APL" it could take a couple months, or a couple years. Depends on how well you do with a full set of foreign symbols.

I see ...

one night ... I was feelin really down ... and waiting for my food and sitting at a table ... and an older man noticed, I guess, and came over to me and said something like, "enjoy life, before you know it, you'll be 50 years old ... "

we turn 50 a lot sooner than we think, huh?

Assuming that you have Unicode support in your browser, here are some symbols used in APL
     ⋄ ⎕ ⍞ ⌹   ∆ ∇ ⍋ ⍒ ⍫  × ÷ ★ ⌈ ⌊   ≤ ≥ ≠ ≢ ≡   ∨ ∧  ← →
    ↓ ↑   ⊢ ⊣ ⊥ ⊤   ⊂ ⊃ ∪ ∩ ∘ ○ ⍟ ⍤ ⍥ ⊖ ⌽ ⍉ ⍺ ⍵ ⍴ ⍳ ∊

There are cases where multiple symbols are used to create one character as well. A comment like is signaled with the character ⍝

I see

APL is, however, very compact, and mathematically powerful. For a mathematician most of the symbols would be instantly recognized, and many others simple to deduce or learn.

I see ...

‽

#10984 Edgar (361 rep) | Q: How to deal with racism in shops and restaurants? (score: 3) | posted 9 hours ago by Galastel (229 rep) | edited 6 hours ago by JAD (3494 rep)

Matched regex(es) ["possible-aic"]

@Ash Programming languages are not like real languages at all. They are however exactly like them because they are real languages. They do have levels of fluency, and they do evolve over time. They just have version numbers (of some sort) to show which "language" you're speaking at the moment.

@GypsySpellweaver A linguist would disagree.

Look at the history of German. And the influence of German on what is called "English".

Programming languages aren't useful for communicating meaning in the same way that human languages are.

I don't consider it a language so much as a developed and formalized polyglot.

Granted, I am not a linguist, or even a student of language to any real level.

The American variant is my native tongue. Though I usually do well with other variants that are not too far from my baseline

@GypsySpellweaver Perhaps it would be a good idea to get a better understanding of linguistics before making a bunch of claims about language.

The classes I took in college were some of the most rewarding I took.

As a general rule I try not to be judgmental of things (including persons). I do try, however, to accept what is, in its unvarnished truth. Not to call it bad or good, but to recognize what it really is.

@GypsySpellweaver I'm unsure what you're trying to say.

@sphennings For one :Computer languages are real languages."

A linguists wouldn't consider a programming language a language.

Perhaps "constructed" languages, but languages none the less.

Despite having the word language in their name.

@GypsySpellweaver Constructed languages are entirely different from programming languages.

If I write a section of code in JavaScript, and later someone else reads that section and understands it, I have communicated - to another human.

If I draw a smily face and someone views it later I have communicated with them but it isn't considered a language.

Good reading and peasant dreams

@GypsySpellweaver You can come up with you're own conceptualizations and definitions, but try not to make definitive statements about things you have already expressed that you don't understand.

Likewise, don't assume I do/don't understand something. Your disagreement does not mean I am wrong.

Then don't make statements of fact.

Welcome back

If I don't know about something. I keep my mouth shut. To quote Benjamin Franklin "Better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt."

Would Webster's be an acceptable source for a definition?

@Ash I read a nice piece about how cats collect sunlight and convert it into gravity. That's why it's so hard to get up once they are in your lap.

@GypsySpellweaver You seem more interested in winning this discussion than learning. If you have questions about linguistics I'd be glad to try to answer them given my limited ability.

If I find it, I'll try to remember you with it.

"Linguistics" wasn't part of the conversion, originally. It was "languages"

@GypsySpellweaver Linguists are the people who study languages.

Linguistics arose as a tool to say computer language is not language

Linguists are the people who study "human" languages

Linguists don't study animal languages, and by some accounts animals predate humans, let alone linguists.

@Ash There are many forms of communication that aren't considered language.

@GypsySpellweaver You've lost me.

I made two declarative statements. One was general: computer languages are real languages. One was personal: I don't consider English to be a language so much as a polyglot.

You seem to have some interesting conceptions about what linguistics is and isn't. Which is interesting since you've admitted to not knowing much about linguistics.

Linguistics can say/declare that my position regarding English is invalid.

You can say anything you want. It doesn't mean that they are particularly meaningful statements.

Relative to whether or not computer languages are or are not languages, however, is out of scope for linguists.

I'm curious what you're definition of a polyglot is.

Just to pointlessly stir the pot... Aren't most all languages polyglots to some extent?

A mixture of languages

Most, if not all, natural languages have borrowed words from one language or another.

In the case of English, however, it seems that most of the words come from somewhere else.

@GypsySpellweaver So... If I follow the arguments thus far... English would be both a polyglot and a language. Everybody wins?

@GypsySpellweaver By that logic you've described every language.

@GypsySpellweaver But to some extent that's true of every language.

@Ash False

@apaul The big problem is that polyglot refers to a person speaking several languages.

@GypsySpellweaver Cite a source.

@sphennings Definition 3 of merriam-webster.com/dictionary/polyglot

That's not a term used to refer to a language.

@Ash For the purposes of whether something is or isn't a language I'd consider linguistics to be the experts on the subject. They consider it a language, so it's a language.

bows

In the realm of human language.

@GypsySpellweaver The definition of language used by linguists doesn't have a human requirement.

I don't believe linguistics studies other forms of language. Though I could be uninformed on that

I'll concede the English point to the linguists.

@GypsySpellweaver Linguists study language. Not communication. There are many forms of communication that aren't language.

So far there aren't any non human languages. So whether linguists study non human languages is a moot point.

@sphennings Are not the yips, howls, growls, and snarls of wolves "language"?

They aren't.

Then you have a whole lot of the world that you will never understand.

For you I truly feel sorow

Not that I suffer from an over abundance of education, but the bar for "language" seems fairly low. And languages evolve over time. To use an obvious example Latin evolved into several modern languages, but the roots are still there, so earlier versions of the language would look an awful lot like bastardized polyglot Latin. The same could be said for modern English in how it evolved as a mixture of old Germanic, Gaelic, Latin, and Norse languages.

@sphennings I'm pretty sure there's been a heap of research into animal languages. Whales and dolphins being the big ones.

@apaul That's considered communication not language.

@sphennings Eh... Splitting hairs.

The Theory of Cat Gravity: robinwood.com/Catalog/Prints/PrintPages/CatGravPoster.html

@apaul It's the same way that gesture isn't a language, but ASL is.

@sphennings Where's the dividing line?

Mathematical symbols express meaning, have syntax and rules, and a proof of academic and scientific quality can be expressed completely and intelligibly therewith. I would call that a "language" though nary a linguist has likely studied it.

I don't know if it's a continuum. It's sort of like how there's regular grammars and context free grammars. There's no midpoint between them

@apaul Fundamentally there are concepts that can be expressed in ASL that can't be expressed in gesture.

@GypsySpellweaver Those aren't languages. Those are formal system. They are fundamentally less expressive than a language.

@sphennings Could it be that a system of gestures is designed for a brain so alien to ours that we simply don't recognize it as language?

Come on now, I'm pretty sure I've seen you on Worlduilding...

@apaul That's a great question to talk about with friends over coffee.

I conceded the English point to the liguist's view. English is within the purview of linguistics. I cannot, however, accept unless it is studied by linguists it is not a language.

@GypsySpellweaver Formal systems are studied by linguists. They're a subset of language, but not languages themselves.

Linguists do study whale song...

@GypsySpellweaver In fact the formalism used to discuss parsing programming languages, were developed by a linguist.

Well, Merriam-Webster seems to be an accepted authority on the meaning of words in the English language. That source considers the communication of animals, the symbols of mathematics, and computer programming languages to be within the first listed definition of "language".

merriam-webster.com/dictionary/language

Gorillas have been taught to use sign language and it's given us insights into how they think. Apparently they don't ask real "questions" or appear to lack a certain amount of theory of mind... They tend to believe that everyone else knows the things they know and think the way they think.

I must be a gorilla

@GypsySpellweaver That's because people have said "The language of birds" and "Programming language" Merriam-Webster is a descriptionist resource not a prescriptionist one. That is why one of the definitions of literally is figuratively.

Or perhaps a touch aspie?

Jokes

@apaul It's an open question whether they are actually using signed language or not.

Do you have a prescriptionist source available to outsiders that is authoritative?

Also... Language evolves like everything else, so it's likely that the very definition of "language" is evolving.

Available to outsiders?

@apaul There are many definitions of language. At the beginning of this discussion I was very clear that to a linguist programming languages aren't language.

I am not a linguist, or academic, so some resources are paywalled and beyond my reach

Semantic arguments often fail to recognize that languages change... Just sayin...

@apaul In fact I just decided that I'll start calling the junk I pull from my drain a language too.

No less so than the junk I pull from my brain, apparently.

It's not really a useful usage of the word when talking with other people.

@sphennings Well, if you do long enough and loud enough, and enough people hear you doing it, that it catches on...

@GypsySpellweaver There isn't a singular definition of language used by linguistics, similar to how there isn't a single definition of language used by biologists.

@apaul That is true. It's not worth it for me to try to overload that word even more.

@GypsySpellweaver That being said every biologist still agrees that myself and the tree outside my house aren't the same species.

You do share a shockingly large amount of similar dna though ;)

They will also not say one is organic and the other is not.

@GypsySpellweaver What definition of organic are you using that a tree and a human aren't both organic life?

key phrase not say

I missed that.

A biologist would not say a tree isn't living simply because it's not human or human-based.

@GypsySpellweaver You're extending the metaphor in the wrong direction.

Personally I'd say that programming languages are in fact "languages" they're just horrifyingly pedantic languages, but they're quite capable of expressing most any idea that a standard spoken/written language could, because they're an evolution of those languages.

A wolf seems to be able to communicate with wolves effectively and efficiently, yet since it is not understood by humans, or does not fit some conceptual model established by you that communication is not language.

@apaul Linguistics consider them formal systems, not languages.

@GypsySpellweaver There are things that cannot be communicated by wolves that are fundamental features of language. There is no mechanism to communicate about things that aren't physically or temporally close.

@sphennings Does a wolf have use for those ideas?

@apaul There are concepts that humans don't have a use for that can still be communicated through language.

Now you are stretching the requirements of language way beyond what a reasonable person (outside linguistics) would.

Nobody is talking my language.

Just poking for entertainment at this point... But it does seem that a spectrum would make a bit more sense than a black and white rule.

@GypsySpellweaver I'm pulling from my old linguistics notes on the difference between animal communication and language.

Hello, puny humans.

There is no currently extant natural human language which can completely express everything humanity is capable of feeling, thinking, or envisioning.

It is I, another puny human.

If there was, human languages would never, ever, evolve one step farther, since it had reached its penultimate state.

@NVZ Psh, shows what you know, I am a meat popsicle.

@GypsySpellweaver Languages aren't evolving towards an ultimate state.

I am a "bag mostly filled with water"

@sphennings Of course. Why not? The ultimate state is an imaginary end point, just like infinity on the number line.

How can you demand that one form of communication posses a quality English lacks, before you will consider it a language?

In my daydreams, I think in the future, people will be telepathic, so no more "words".

@NVZ That would hold if languages were on a continuum.

@GypsySpellweaver You've lost me again.

My partner is somewhat convinced that we're approaching the age of the image as language.

@apaul We are certainly using images to communicate but I'm skeptical that they will become a language.

If language is not on a continuum, then at what point in human communications did language spring into existence, where before it was merely gestures and grunts?

Art students are kinda like that, I don't know if I completely buy it either.

@GypsySpellweaver When exactly does speciation happen?

Did not the ancient Egyptians communicate with images?

@GypsySpellweaver Are you aware of ring species.

@GypsySpellweaver They wrote with pictographs but that's different.

Ring species - point is?

If I make a point using ring species as an example will I need to explain what a ring species is first?

Inter breeding possible, except with two (at least) end points that cannot between them.

Sufficient?

Though it is getting farther and wider than Fortran is/is not a real language.

@Ash here

Some ring species don't have endpoints. Biologists don't waste their time arguing where to draw them. It's similar with linguists and language.

They acknowledge that their definition isn't sufficient and move on to actual concerns.

Poking again, but many of the lines that humans have drawn to separate us from the animals have fallen over time... Tools, agriculture, advanced problem solving, etc... It would seem reasonable that it's just a matter of time before we observe some species doing the language.

Fortran isn't a language in the eyes of a linguist because it's considered a formal language (overloading the term language).

So when does a non language become a language in the eyes of a linguist? They don't care because they don't have one to study. The would probably give their firstborn for the chance to watch it happen though.

Formal languages lack many features that languages have that are interesting to linguistics.

Such as?

Felt like you were waiting for that, so... stirs the pot

@apaul Any sort of regional variants. Language acquisition is much less interesting for formal languages than for Languages.

What I see here is that linguistics has a working definition of "language" that is useful in their field. That is not at all an uncommon professional attribute. There exists, however, another definition of "language" as used in the communication of common people which is wider and deeper than the linguist's working definition.

Formal languages are often embedded in other languages many math papers still need to be translated into other languages despite the formalism remaining the same.

You read enough code and you will see regional variants. Having coded in the western US and the central US I can swear to that.

@GypsySpellweaver Everyone has their own programming style.

It's more than "style" completely different idioms as well.

Well, is that a linguistic term, "idiom"?

@GypsySpellweaver So is parsing and syntax.

Both those terms came from linguistics and are now essential terms for talking about programming languages but that doesn't make them full fledged languages.

@apaul There are whole fields of study that aren't applicable to programming languages.

NoTiCe HoW yOu CaN StIlL rEaD tHiS?

@sphennings Like geology? ;)

Lol I meant within linguistics.

I know, just low hanging fruit.

I can't blame you.

For instance every language has complicated rules for how to incorporate words from other languages into their own. That's the study of how marry christmas became mele kalikimaka in Hawaiian.

youtube.com/watch?v=0h-gbeI0AFQ If you want an explanation for how it works.

I submit that the working definition is useful in its place, and is not as useful outside of its purview. As such, when dealing with "language" from a practical linguistic the guidelines of what to study and what to ignore are equally useful.

The linguistic working definition is not, however, authoritative outside that field of study and to the rest of the world.

You know, once the singularity takes over and they force you to learn to speak in fluent Lisp, you're going to regret this conversation.

But when you say "English isn't a language, but Fortran is" you aren't subscribing to any definition.

* any commonly used definition.

Or, perhaps in the interest of keeping things binary, in Lojban

Ok, the English point was conceded. Twice already.

For starters I haven't pulled Fortran out of my drain.

To go back to your original statement "Programming languages are not like real languages at all. They are however exactly like them because they are real languages."

As to "commonly used definition" you've already said that Merriam-Webster is not authoritative, but did not provide an alternative. Until an alternative "authority" is provided on what is a commonly used definition for "language" I will have to follow the dictionary.

To reiterate what I said " A linguist would disagree."

There are many features of a language that a programming language lacks.

The world exists outside of the linguist's tower. I live in that world, not the tower. I trust Merriam-Webster and the OED more than I trust a linguistic working definition.

Features lacking is still on the table. Both as to their true "lack" and their requirement for being a "language"

@GypsySpellweaver In the eyes of Merriam-Webster since a programming language, has the word language in the name it's a definition of language used by people so it's worth documenting.

Is that not what "commonly used definition" means?

You said that a programming language is exactly like a real language.

Other than general statements that they "lack" something, what do they lack?

You're saying effectively programming languages are exactly like english, mandarin, and swahili because it has the word language in the title.

From a "commonly used definition" of language, as you put it

No. because they are used to communicate complex, abstract ideas.

They evolve, they change, and they grow.

So yes English is exactly like haskell because they are both called languages.

The only thing I can see that they lack from what you call a language is anything of interest to a linguist

I have heard many people disagree with the Christian Bible, but very few have said the OED was wrong about a definition of an English word.

There are other similarities as well but if you looked at every language and every programming language you would see some very clear differences between the two groups.

Do you understand that "So yes English is exactly like haskell because they are both called languages." was intended sarcastically?

If you look at the Indo-European language group and compare it with some non-Indo_European language group, say Semitic, do you not also find very clear differences between the groups?

There are features of language that programming languages simply don't have.

To say that they are similar because they are both called languages is a falsehood.

@sphennings That phrase has become rhetoric. Can we discuss some of these things that they don't have?

For starters programming languages are formally defined.

1) what is the meaning behind "formally defined" and 2) how does that make it not a language?

Fundamentally programming languages are designed for one and only one task to express computations.

There are no other concepts that can be expressed in a programming language.

Comments don't count.

In the eyes of a programming language comments have no meaning and are ignored.

I do believe that is reversed. Not to express computations, but to use computations.

Languages can be ambiguous in ways that programming languages cannot be.

While both languages and programming languages have a concept of an idiom they are very different things.

In programming, when ambiguous statements occur users get upset, they however happen frequently

In language ambiguous statements are an acceptable part of the system.

Again, what is the difference, this time with "idiom"?

A programming idiom is a common method of expressing a computation, like how in python it's idiomatic to use a list comprehension over a for loop.

The system will accept ambiguity, just as a legal brief will accept it. The user will reject it, just as the judge will reject it.

...

In a language an idiom is an expression that isn't taken literally. When I say "I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop" I'm not talking about footware.

@GypsySpellweaver Legal contracts are a subset of language.

Idiom = say one thing, mean another?

Statements with both a literal and a figurative meaning.

I disagree with that definition of idiom as absolute.

The phrase "waiting for the other shoe to drop" is an idiom

Yes, it is one example of an idiom

So is a style unique to a region idiomatic