> > Well, throw-in-the-towel is known (at least the acording
> > phrase is in wide use in Germany - just most don't know
> > the orgin), but what is Ebonyx ?
> Ebonyx was the attempt by some boards of education in California to establish
> the slang associated with Black culture as a language so they could get funding
> to teach english as a second language. It was always a brazen attempt to get
> funding, nothing more.
:))
> > Serious, ain't we are going exactly the same way with
> > programming languages as with real ones ? Just instead
> > of centuries, it took only some dozend years to go from
> > Machine code (grunting sounds) to ADA (Goethes Poems)
> *laugh* I'm not sure I'd compare any computer language to Goethe, but it's
> a good analogy...
:)
> > and only less than 10 years to fall back to C ?
> I think Hans is making a bit of a joke here, but he's not far from the mark.
> A living language is not a static thing. It grows. It evolves. Parts are
> added and other parts dropped as the society that speaks it changes. Until
> recently (ie the last 20 years or so) English was taught in a very prescriptive
> way - x is the correct way to speak, where x is whatever dictionary and/or
> grammar system you embrace.
No, I'm bloody serious (beside some humorous thing). In my opinion
C (and C++) is way down the ladder and as more as I think about I
find it more and more similar to the 'real' language thing discussed
in here.
I wouldn't consider C as anything 'grown'. maybe evolved in the
sense of degeneration.
I often think about what happened - why are all other languages
out classed ? Some beauty(and use)full are almost forgotten.
What happened to Pascal, Modula or Smalltalk (not to talk about
ADA which I still consider the best design ever) ?
There's only C (no, I don't recognize C++ or Java on their own).
And interestingly a still existing COBOL population.
> However in the late 60s (things take time to
> filter into the education system) some language experts - notably Webster's
> Dictionary among them - began to realise that language *changes* over time.
> Websters dictionary embraced a descriptive philosophy - we're not in the
> business of telling you how you SHOULD speak, only how you DO speak.
> One of the results of this was the formation of the American Heritage
> dictionary, which clung to the prescriptive philosophy.
Well, to late over here - Standard German has equalized most German
languages and dialects. More than 100 years of Education did succeede.
Anyway
H.
--
VCF Europa am 29./30. April 2000 in Muenchen
http://www.vintage.org/vcfe
http://www.homecomputer.de/vcfe
Received on Thu Mar 09 2000 - 14:45:29 GMT