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C's syntax (was Re: Python Formatted C Converter (PfCC))

Alex Martelli aleaxit at yahoo.com
Sun Oct 29 04:13:44 EST 2000 
"Grant Griffin" <not.this at seebelow.org> wrote in message
news:39FB2080.D38CAD35 at seebelow.org...
    [snip]
> If you speak true words of wisdom on some subject, the words stand on
> their own.

Oh, do they?  Even to a reader whose knowledge of the subject
is infinitesimal?  How interesting!  So (supposing for the sake
of argument you knew no Italian), you are somehow able (is
it divine inspiration, ESP, or...?) to tell whether the following
assertion, for example...:

"hyphenation in Italian is best performed algorithmically,
given the strong regularity of the language's syllabification
rules; trying to adapt to Italian hyphenation algorithms
designed for other languages, adjusting only a data table
to account for the language, is vastly sub-optimal"

is made up of "true words of wisdom"?  How, pray tell, do
these words "stand on their own", when you have no basis
on which to apply judgment?


Are you _seriously_ claiming that a reader's ability to judge
the worth of my words about Italian usage is not helped by
knowing that I am a native speaker of Italian, have lived in
Italy for most of my life, have co-authored with Tullio De
Mauro (a prominent Italian linguist, currently the Minister
for Education) a book on the results of computational
linguistic studies applied to Italian, etc?

Assuming (for the sake of argument) you truly mean what
you write, this seems a serious case of "word fetishism"
on your part.  Most sensible readers would agree that their
ability to judge whether to apply this advice is strongly
affected by information regarding the advisor's competence
regarding the Italian language, its linguistic study, and the
application of computers to handling it.


And similarly, when we're not talking of simple work/does
not work advice that can easily be tested, but of more
general issues (is a given language's syntax good or
terrible), information on the advisor's competence, fluency,
and experience with the language being discussed is
crucial to the reader's ability to judge the worth of the
advice being proffered.  Words never "stand on their
own": they refer (partly implicitly, partly explicitly) to
a *context*, a "state of the world" which fully includes
the relevant experiences of the speaker and listener.

If it were true, as some dolt maintained, that "only people
who don't like C" criticize its syntax, this might be relevant,
weakening a bit the weight of these criticisms.  It is,
therefore, important to show how deeply wrong this
assertion is -- that some of the people who most harshly
dislike C's syntax have vast experience with the language
and like it overall (for its suitable uses) *despite* the
terrible syntax, while the very inventor of the language,
in an article that defends it against some criticisms, freely
admits to its "quirky and flawed" nature, particularly on
a syntax plane, and explains the historical accidents and
mistakes that led to some of its worst idiosyncrasies.


Alex
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