It's Not About the Syntax – Why Language Doesn't Matter | Hacker News Reader

It's Not About the Syntax – Why Language Doesn't Matter

spin.atomicobject.com

10 pointsphilk103 comments

Spoken like someone who has only learned languages from a single paradigm. “Programming languages are built on a common conceptual foundation.” This simply isn't true. The conceptual foundation of Java is quite distant from the conceptual foundation of APL, which is itself distant from that of Haskell, which is itself distant from that of Prolog. If you know one, you don't automatically know the others.

If you're only talking about mainstream OO languages, the point holds, but those are really more like accents than they are languages. Speaking in a British accent won't let you communicate in a fundamentally different way, but speaking in Mandarin actually will.

In short: It's not about the syntax, but it is about the semantics.

Spoken like someone who only knows one natural language. As the article stated all languages are about communication. Each language has its own syntax (ie words and word order) but the concept of a rose or money is the same, the concept of an action is the same as is the concept of a pronoun otherwise people would not be able to translate between languages. The semantics of a language are often tied up in the culture of the language.

When it comes to computer languages similar principles are at play. The concept of a list or array or matrix of values is common across a wide variety of language types for OO to Functional to Declarative. As is the concept of IO. The need to communicate with something outside of the program. The fact that some languages point out the and IO operation is about to occur does not mean that the paradigm does not use or need them.

In short: Speak English when you are in Britain, yorkshire when in Yorkshire, cockney when in London, and Mandarin when in China. Use the appropriate language for the task at hand or get an interpreter.

I speak four natural languages. I don't love the analogy, because I think differences between computer languages are more significant than differences between natural languages. That said, there are still more differences than just who you can speak with. Example off the top of my head: if you think in Mandarin, the future is behind you and the past is in front. You mention actions being the same, but the way you think about actions will be very different if you think in a language with few tenses (Mandarin) compared to one with many (Romance languages).

Obviously both computer languages and natural languages have some things in common, but they also have significant differences.

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