Re: Does natural language skill translate to programming skill?

Am Sun, 11 Mar 2007 11:16:27 +0100 schrieb Joachim Pense:

Am Sun, 11 Mar 2007 17:19:30 +0800 schrieb LEE Sau Dan:

"Aidan" == Aidan Kehoe <kehoea@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Aidan> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Wall . (Larry invented
Aidan> the language; his formal qualifications were in
Aidan> linguistics, but Iʼve never seen a really satisfactory
Aidan> explanation of what aspect of it.)


Well, Perl is my programming language of choice, but I don't really
like Larry's superficial references to "linguistics".

I see. But Perl is the computer language with the ugliest (but
convenient) syntax. It's not context free (of course) nor LALR(1).
It is said that there is so far only 1 implemenation of the parser for
Perl. Nobody is ambitious enough to implement another, because the
grammar is so complicated.


It was designed to be like that. The P in "Perl" doesn't mean
"practical" for nothing.

For comparison, many AI reseach try to process natural language using
LISP or Prolog, whose grammars are so much more regular and simpler
than Perl.

A simple and regular grammar doesn't often make using the language
easier.


And that's why computer scientists just hate Perl. (The same holds for
PL/1, btw. Of course I was fortunate enough to be exposed to _Multics_
PL/1)
.

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