Avatar wrote:
> On Feb 23, 3:21 pm, Eleanor McHugh <elea... / games-with-brains.com>
> wrote:
>   
>> On 23 Feb 2009, at 19:47, Chad Perrin wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>>     
>>> On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 09:48:44PM +0900, Eleanor McHugh wrote:
>>>       
>>>> 1 2 + 3 / 4 +
>>>>         
>>>> I always liked Forth's RPN simplicity :)
>>>>         
>>> I don't much like combining postfix notation with right-to-left
>>> evaluation.  I tend to think that the notation should "precede" the
>>> operands in the direction in which operations are evaluated.  Of  
>>> course,
>>> that's more a matter of familiarity and comfort for me than any kind  
>>> of
>>> objective criteria (other than consistency with traditional function
>>> notation), but it's how I feel.
>>>       
>>> In other words, if the operator notation is going to be placed to the
>>> right of the operands, I'd prefer operands be evaluated right-to-left.
>>>       
>>> Of course, I don't think *anyone* would like the way that would  
>>> look, so
>>> that pretty much breaks down to preferring prefix notation over  
>>> postfix
>>> notation.
>>>       
>> But postfix notation is just so natural: load operands on the stack;  
>> operate on operands; get result from stack. Imagine how sweet Lisp  
>> would be without all those damn parentheses:
>>
>> Brian Candler <b.cand... / pobox.com> writes:
>>     
>>> Sure. But why would anyone want to write something like
>>>       
>>>    a = b + c
>>>       
>>> when they could just as easily have written
>>>       
>>>    (set!
>>>       (quote a)
>>>       (+ b c))
>>>       
>>         b c + set! a
>>
>> is much easier on the eye :)
>>
>> Ellie
>>
>> Eleanor McHugh
>> Games With Brainshttp://slides.games-with-brains.net
>> ----
>> raise ArgumentError unless @reality.responds_to? :reason
>>     
>
> The Nexus (left-to-right) assignment operator '^' is also referred to
> as the 'goes to' operator. The choice of symbol is meaningful, you
> might think of the '^' character as an arrow meaning the value you
> just put on the stack (the left side of the expression) 'goes to' to
> the memory location (i.e. variable) on the right-side of the
> expression (i.e. 123^x, 123 'goes to' x).
>
>
>   
A most fascinating thread, coming from a very distant universe, as I do.

As for this use of "^", it is about as needless as yet another poem 
about a flower. Don't we already have one, somewhere? I fully realize 
that calculation (computer) languages are not poems, but they ARE 
containers for thought, and in that they are brothers/sisters to poems.

I'm with Eleanor in loving the exploration of different ways of 
thinking/working with stuff (and in having an appreciation for the 
elgance of RPN). A large part of the sheer burst of joy that grabbed me 
and threw me into the Ruby world, on the occasion of my fifth look at 
the language, was the delight I experienced upon finally understanding 
that this language was "working" the notion that everything could be an 
object, and have access to methods belonging to the class of which it 
was a member. The sheer elegance of this was new to me and is still a 
very major delight.

So, I have to wonder, when meeting up with a new language, if maybe I'm 
about to hear my first Stravinsky ballet, or perhaps run into something 
like Spencer Brown's "Laws of form" (1972). Beauty is found in strange 
places. If we're all lucky, the Nexus project will come up with some 
we've not seen yet. That would be most excellent, howsoever difficult it 
may be to achieve.

Tom

-- 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tom Cloyd, MS MA, LMHC - Private practice Psychotherapist
Bellingham, Washington, U.S.A: (360) 920-1226
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<< TomCloyd.com >> (website) 
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