[Haskell-cafe] off-topic question: how well do you think linguistic relativity applies to PLs and programming?

[Simon Yarde]

> programming ... languages, and in particular the way that programmers use them, afford a
> capacity for essentially limitless amounts of abstraction, unlike human
> language and human communication.


Au contraire! Humans use just such powerful abstractions in language, arts and sciences — what we call humanity is built on no less.  They're called *memes*.

The only difference is that humans communicate on a foundation of shared experience that is a little more fuzzy and infinitely richer than the result of a data-base lookup.

Simon Yarde



On 22 Jan 2014, at 23:35, Keshav Kini <keshav.kini at gmail.com> wrote:

> Lucas Paul <reilithion at gmail.com> writes:
>> This is my take, as a CS undergraduate.
>> 
>> I'm not sure if we can say that a programmer's language of choice
>> determines the way they think about programming (the strong version of
>> linguistic relativity for programming, as I see it). But I think it's
>> fairly obvious that the language we choose to use to solve a problem
>> affects how we think about the solution. That's basically the entire
>> raison d'être for domain-specific languages (DSLs)!
>> 
>> DSLs are popular (and becoming more so) precisely because the right
>> choice of DSL can make expressing the solution to a particular kind of
>> problem almost trivial. A poor choice can almost doom an endeavor.
>> Imagine trying to query a database in assembly language. No SQL. It
>> would at the very least require some mental gymnastics that a SELECT
>> statement simply obviates.
> 
> I think this can be partially explained by noting that programming
> languages, and in particular the way that programmers use them, afford a
> capacity for essentially limitless amounts of abstraction, unlike human
> language and human communication.  For example, I might easily have a
> magic library that does exactly what I want, with bindings for my
> programming language of choice, in which case I don't need to think
> about what to do, I just call the appropriate function.  In human
> communication, while someone might have perfectly formulated exactly the
> idea I want to communicate, it is rarely sufficient for the purpose of
> communication to say "insert pages 204 through 356 of _Foobar_ by John
> Doe here" in the middle of a conversation :)
> 
> -Keshav
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Haskell-Cafe mailing list
> Haskell-Cafe at haskell.org
> http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe