English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

And it's got some weird holes. Like no general way to calculate the length of an array within the language itself. And a non-general way which always returns an answer, but is wrong in general. I.e. #.

The fact that # on a non-sequence doesn't generate an exception is just one of the things that makes using lua a bit like cutting yourself to feel better. — boatcoder Nov 9 '15 at 16:15

Robusto

4:33 PM

Heh. I do like JavaScript, though, though many seem to disparage it. I love that functions are first-class objects, and that the prototype inheritance is much less resource-intensive than classical inheritance allows.

Cerberus

@Robusto I find its documentation lacking, though. Especially for those new to the language or to programming.

Robusto

JavaScript's GREP engine is limited, but plenty good enough for the bulk of the tasks it encounters in web pages.

Cerberus

Javascript's is somewhat better.

Autohotkey's is 1000% better than anything else I've seen.

Robusto

@Cerberus There are plenty of Python tutorials out there.

Cerberus

I'm sure.

But the standard documentation is poor.

Robusto

4:39 PM

Mostly everyone's "standard" documentation leaves something to be desired.

Cerberus

Even with Googling, it took me quite some time to get Regex flags to work in Python, of all things.

Robusto

AHK has one source, right? And the person whose baby it is wants people to be able to use it.

Cerberus

Autohotkey's documentation is really good. It is well written, English-wise; it is complete; it has great examples, etc.

@Robusto Development was taken over by someone else.

Robusto

@Cerberus Usually things like that are differences in implementation. You're used to doing it one way, and the new way needs to be stroked a bit differently. The concepts generally remain the same.

Cerberus

Whose entries in the documentation are indeed somewhat worse: they are still complete and well worded, but they explain things more succinctly, and they provide poorer examples.

Robusto

4:41 PM

@Cerberus Someone else. Single source still?

Cerberus

I'm not sure what a single source is.

That is, how can there be more than one source?

Robusto

Multiple sources of knowledge about a thing.

Different takes on the same subject.

Cerberus

The official documentation is just that.

There is only one 'official' or standard or what have you documentation for Python, isn't there?

At least there was one that Google always led me to.

Robusto

Whatever. Usually, or at least often, people who create a language or a tool rely on third parties to explain it to hoi polloi.

Whenever things seem cumbersome in Python it's usually because I'm doing them wrong, trying to use a paradigm I know from a different language.

Faheem Mitha

4:59 PM

Python's documentation is usually quite good. Including the standard libraries. Of course, nothing is perfect.

And one can always look at source code. Or test examples.

Free software documentation can get a lot worse than that. The Lua documentation isn't great, for example.

Cerberus

@FaheemMitha Perhaps, but still bad enough to give me various unnecessary headaches which e.g. Autohotkey'd documentation never did.

Faheem Mitha

And aside from GNU, the free software ecosystem is very patchy when it comes to documentation.

Stallman considered documentation very important, and it shows.

Try to find documentation for the Linux kernel, for example. Yikes.

@Cerberus It's hard to write good documentation.

Cerberus

Yes.

Faheem Mitha

At least the Python docs aren't written using impenetrable jargon.

Cerberus

Perhaps not.

But there was still enough impenetrable jargon in it to give me a headache.

Faheem Mitha

5:04 PM

Even something like regex doesn't exactly have great documentation. And that's used everywhere.

Cerberus

I refer again to Regex flags as an example.

Faheem Mitha

I was earlier complaining about the part of the grep documents that covers regex.

Cerberus

Ah.

It is true that I use this site whenever I want to look something up about Regex:

regular-expressions.info

It's very well written.

Faheem Mitha

I at least thought it was fairly awful. And that's a relatively minor example.

@Cerberus Not exactly free documentation, though.

Well, free as in freedom.

Cerberus

Freedom information?

Faheem Mitha

5:07 PM

@Cerberus Free as in conforming to the free software guidelines. Whether GNU or Debian. They're pretty much the same.

The free documentation licenses are basically the same.

Cerberus

I have no idea.

It's just a good site.

Faheem Mitha

GNU Free Documentation License

The GNU Free Documentation License (GNU FDL or simply GFDL) is a copyleft license for free documentation, designed by the Free Software Foundation (FSF) for the GNU Project. It is similar to the GNU General Public License, giving readers the rights to copy, redistribute, and modify (except for "invariant sections") a work and requires all copies and derivatives to be available under the same license. Copies may also be sold commercially, but, if produced in larger quantities (greater than 100), the original document or source code must be made available to the work's recipient. The GFDL was designed...

@Cerberus Yes, there's official documentation for the major Python stuff, including the standard libraries, or whatever Python calls them.

Cerberus

Right, and it caused me headaches.

Faheem Mitha

These days Python is so widely used that the documentation is quite reasonable and complete for the major libraries. Which is nice.

@Cerberus Yes, so you said. Bear in mind you can leave feedback.

And I'm sure patches are encouraged.

Cerberus

I am incapable.

I don't really know the language.

Faheem Mitha

5:33 PM

@Cerberus It's not that hard. At a minimum, you can file a bug report. Describe what you didn't understand. There is always room for improvement.

The trouble is that documentation is rarely anyone's first priority.

Cerberus

5:50 PM

I'm not really motivated.

@FaheemMitha Which is somewhat understandable, but regrettable.

Even so, Autohotkey has great documentation despite being developed by very few people, mainly one person at a time.

Faheem Mitha

6:25 PM

@Cerberus Another thing to keep in mind about technical documentation is that the people it are experts on the subject matter, by definition.

Therefore they don't always realise where the difficulties lie.

I think this is a significant and poorly recognized problem.

This is where user feedback can be useful - to point out what is unclear to a non-expert.

I've done that quite a lot in the past. I do it less, these days.

Mitch

7:10 PM

@Cerberus I've heard that parts of the orbital mechanics calculations for the Dragon X space system has been coded in AHK.

@FaheemMitha Dude, I forgot to say 'Welcome back!'. You just slipped right back into things like it was nothing. Where have you been all this time?

Cerberus

@FaheemMitha Yes, absolutely.

It takes a good teacher to write good documentation.

@Mitch Oh, seriously?

Somehow, I doubt that...

Autohotkey is far from efficient.

Robusto

7:32 PM

Very low ceiling today, but good visibility beneath the lowering clouds.

Faheem Mitha

@Mitch I'm a little puzzled by this comment. I've been in front of my computer, as usual. Thanks for the welcome, though.

Cerberus

It's just Mitch's friendly way of saying welcome back.

Robusto

@FaheemMitha Mitch couldn't see you for a while. Maybe you moved something in front of the screen?

Faheem Mitha

@Cerberus That's nice.

@Robusto Perhaps.

Cerberus

7:48 PM

A corona screen?

Faheem Mitha

A what now?

Szabolcs

Are pine, spruce, fir distinct in the common language as well in English? I was never sure if only pedants insist on the distinction, or if these are really distinct categories even in the common language. Is there a term which can encompass all three? Can I just use pine?

Robusto

8:08 PM

@Szabolcs Evergreen or conifer are hypernyms for those. But anybody who has a knowledge of trees can tell the difference between the species you name.

Szabolcs

@Robusto So the three terms are really disjoint in the common language, without any intersection.

I don't like conifer, it's too scientific. Evergreen might do.

Robusto

@Szabolcs Many people would not know the difference.

Some might call them all "pine trees" ...

Szabolcs

@Robusto OK, then I think "pine" is the best :-)

I was trying to translate a word that encompasses all three from my own language.

Robusto

I'd probably call them evergreens, but that's just me. You could get away with pine.

Szabolcs

We have one word for the category. These three kinds have more specific words for them: the general word is prefixed by a "kind" indicating the more specific category.

Like how 羊 encompasses both goats and sheep in Chinese.

Robusto

8:15 PM

Interesting. In Japanese that's just "sheep"; you have to add "mountain" to it to get goat: 山羊

A goat is a "mountain sheep" ^_^

Szabolcs

OK, maybe it's the same in Chinese. But the goat is called a kind of sheep :-) My Chinese is very limited.

I just confirmed with a Chinese speaker that a goat is indeed considered a kind of 羊.

That contrasts with how a 熊猫 (panda) is decidedly not a 猫 (cat).

Robusto

Hahaha.

Szabolcs

Well, in Hungarian we call raccoons "washing bears", but we don't think of them as bears :-) I believe it's the same in German.

Robusto

@Szabolcs Raccoons and bears are cousins.

Yeah, in Japanese "bearcat" is available but rare. A panda is just a panda: パンダ.

Szabolcs

Are you Japanese or do you just speak it?

Robusto

8:24 PM

I am American, wife is Japanese and I studied the language.

Szabolcs

Sometimes it seems like Japanese is just funny sounding English :-) youtu.be/ba0QJPw8Blg?t=43

Robusto

Yeah, that's because there are so many gairaigo (foreign loan words) in Japanese.

But they're pronounced nothing like what you expect, so they actually can be quite difficult.

Szabolcs

gairaigo — thanks for that term!

Robusto

What is a waapurou? Why, a word processor.

@Szabolcs 外来語 in kanji.

Szabolcs

It's interesting that Japanese is so open to borrowing, while Chinese is so resistant. Must be because Chinese only has characters (harder to transcribe things phonetically), and insists on mono- or bisyllabic words.

Robusto

8:33 PM

Could be. But as I say, the Japanese butcher the pronunciations of foreign words by adapting them to the 五十音 (the Japanese syllabary).

Native speakers of English also don't hear the difference between long vowels and short ones: they don't distinguish between ちず (chizu, map) and チーズ (chiizu, the loan word "cheese")

But if you have a good ear, spoken Japanese is fairly easy to understand, especially if it's a woman speaking. Harder when it's a man, because it's considered less manly to be too articulate, and worse when they're trying to speak through a mouthful of noodles (which happens more often than you'd think).

Szabolcs

@Robusto Well, speakers of every language do that, including English.

Færd

End time stuff

Robusto

@Szabolcs Sure. But there is this sort of "tessellation" that happens going from English to Japanese.

@Færd Where is that?

Szabolcs

Japanese seems to be a bit poorer phonetically than most languages.

Fewer sounds available to try to render foreign words.

Robusto

That's what I'm saying. It has a lot of sounds, but they are very regular and also time-based.

Szabolcs

8:43 PM

Does it have long consonants as well?

Færd

@Robusto SF? You should be able to tell from that bridge in the background.

Robusto

@Szabolcs Those are doubled consonants.

Færd

I guess it's a famous bridge.

Robusto

@Færd Ah, OK. I didn't look closely, was so overcome by the golden sky that I didn't notice the Golden Gate. ^_^

Færd

And it was said that the pic was take at 9 am.

The sky is red due to the fires, actually.

Szabolcs

8:45 PM

Most people would recognize the Golden Gate from its colour. But in this picture everything is red. So it looks like any other suspension bridge.

Robusto

@Szabolcs For example, what we call Tokyo in English, three syllables, is four in Japanese: とうきょう or to-u-kyo-u. (Two kanji: 東京)

@Szabolcs Well, the colour is more like terracotta in real life.

Szabolcs

Do you live there?

Sounds like two syllables when I make Google Translate pronounce it. translate.google.com/…

Færd

@Robusto Why do I see a U in your colour? Are you showing your true colors? lol

Robusto

@Szabolcs See? You don't encode for the isochronous language.

@Færd Blame Szabolcs. He spelled it colour and I unconsciously copied that. ^_^

Szabolcs

In Hungarian we have independent vowel length, consonant length and stress. So I am quite sensitive to the distinction.

Færd

8:48 PM

haha

Szabolcs

But this is two syllables, both in Google's Japanese pronunciation and in the typical English pronunciation.

M.A.R.

Coulour

Robusto

That's the true "colour" of the bridge.

Szabolcs

When a Hungarian speaker says "Tokió", it's three syllables because Hungarian has no diphthongs, so the i and the o become separate syllables.

Robusto

hardly gold, I would think.

@Szabolcs Trust me, it's four syllables in Japanese.

M.A.R.

8:50 PM

The namer was colorblind

I couldn't make out the bridge in the apocalyptic image

Færd

It's not the Golden Bridge. Where's the Gate?

BTW I didn't even know the name. It just looked familiar.

Robusto

@Færd The gate was left open, possibly by a careless Californian.

M.A.R.

Dems

Robusto

Let's not get me started on politics.

M.A.R.

BTW, I increased pace and duration a bit, and it now seems . . . easier, somehow?

9 kmph is a harder pace while easy running than 10 kmph

The former seems to be a bigger strain on my calf muscles

@Robusto Anyway, has anything changed from a few months ago? Is the situation still bad for Trump?

SmokeDetector

9:01 PM

[ SmokeDetector | MS ] Link at beginning of answer (32): Verb meaning "to robust" by heywelshie on english.SE

Robusto

@M.A.R. He has continued at his miserable pace. And he appears to be in big trouble.

Hey, who says I'm a stabilizing force? ^_^ — Robusto 16 secs ago

Robust is not an "official" verb. The problem with the adjective in general is that it is not necessarily clear what you mean, and so no clear synonym comes to mind. What exactly is "more robust software"? I hear this used all the time and it can mean software that has more features, fewer bugs, better ability to handle problems that arise — always more of something desirable, but the something is always part of a larger context and not inherent in that single word. — Robusto Aug 20 '12 at 12:03

@M.A.R. Funny how that works. It's called conditioning.

Robusto

9:26 PM

@Mitch: I keep thinking I should scratch where it itches, but I'm concerned that might be a little rash.

Færd

9:42 PM

Today I finished When Nietzsche Wept. A work of mastery. Seldom do I pick up pop fiction, but this was a gift from a friend. Well worth the time.

M.A.R.

9:58 PM

@Robusto it's not that, there's something else at play. Even now if I go at 9 kmph my legs start to hurt after 10 minutes, but not at 10 kmph. Above 10 where my borrowed kidney is starts to hurt, so I don't venture far

@Færd I kinda don't know how to tell pop fiction and fiction fiction apart. It seems blurry.

I'm stuck still with The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and A Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck

The former is boring, merely driven by the interesting points it makes. The latter no one in chat would probably like. It's like something a teen should definitely read, but anyone above 30 that cared has already absorbed all the necessary knowledge and more eloquently and detailed at that.

For me it's more like the book of the resistance in 1984. Organizing the thoughts and confirming what I had already known. But at their heart, self-help books are really just enablers, even ones that strive not to be

The images are not mine; it's a Reddit meme. Faith in humanity +1, nonetheless

Mitch

@FaheemMitha Welcome back to ELU chat is all I'm saying. I'm sure you didn't disappear from the universe for a while and then magically pop back into existence. Pretty sure. Mostly.

@M.A.R. Couloir

@Færd Is that San Francisco or Tehran? Don't they have brush fires there or is it just big city air pollution?

@Szabolcs I think the important distinction is that they just don't do consonant clusters. So hard to borrow European words, but Chinese (which has an entirely different phonetic inventory but similarly no clusters) can be more easily borrowed into Japanese.

@Robusto I had to read that many times... like why would you be telling me about some skin condition?

@Færd Oh. I should read the transcript before commenting.

M.A.R.

11:06 PM

reddit.com/r/dankmemes/comments/ipfh4a/you_are_finally_awake/…

RGS

Hey everyone, can I ask a quick question about English usage?

I was trying to understand if "indices" and "indexes" are to be taken as synonym words or as two different versions of the same word.

And I care about this distinction because if they are synonyms, then in a text I would try to use both so as to make the vocabulary of a text more diverse and less repetitive; if they are two versions of the same word, then I want to stick with one for the whole text to show consistency in writing style.

Much like I wouldn't write "recognize" in some places and "recognise" in others.

Cerberus

@RGS Two versions of the same word.

Indices is much nicer, in my opinion.

RGS

@Cerberus I prefer the sound of "indices" better but other than that I can't make a strong point about which one I prefer

Do you have any nice arguments to make your case? Or is it just unfounded personal preference?

Cerberus

11:21 PM

Some principles of style:

- Unusual is usually better than plain and regular.

- Older is usually better than newfangled.

- Erudition is better than ignorance.

Index is a Latin word, with a Latin plural indices which is in common use in English.

RGS

Alright, I like those bullet points.

Cerberus

Yay.

Most style books will agree on those points.

RGS

For a long time I always used "indices" because I thought "indexes" was just wrong, but then I found out "indexes" could also be used...

Cerberus

"Wrong" is relative hehe.

Sep 4 at 23:54, by Cerberus

Ultimately, an error is in the eye of the beholder(s).

RGS

@Cerberus Nice, someone made a similar statement about writing code: "readability is in the eye of the beholder"; I find it easier to agree with the one I linked than with yours, though; certainly some types of errors are just plain errors, regardless of the beholder, no?

But I was about to ask; imagine I had arrived at Merriam-Webster's page on "index", in which they list both plural forms. How would I find the one that is more in line with your bullet points?

Cerberus

11:28 PM

> - Stage 1: An arrant mistake crops up. It may actually get a little bit of currency, but it is widely rejected.
- Stage 2: It spreads. It begins spreading to as many as half of the members of the language community, but not the best-educated half.
- Stage 3: It now is being used by a majority of the language community, including many college-educated people, but the best-educated people reject it.
- Stage 4: It becomes all but ubiquitous and only a few diehard "snoots," as David Foster Wallace calls them, reject it.

@RGS Well, can you try to apply each principle?

Which would seem more regular, indexes or indices?

Regular = predictable, according to simple, very common rules.

RGS

@Cerberus Yeah I got that; indexes looks much more regular, and from there I would argue indices looks more erudite

As for age, I couldn't tell.

Cerberus

Latin is an old language. Latin influence on English is older than modern developments.

RGS

Fair enough.

Thanks for the food for thought.

And thanks for giving me some arguments to support a position I wanted to defend but didn't know how to.