[sf-perl] [meeting] Pegex and Acmeism

[Kevin Frost]

I love this thread because I love thinking about natural languages and computer languages and how they interrelate, especially in the context of the very "linguistic" Perl.

However, I can never be an Acmeist, because:

> Acmeism is the belief that language naturally tends to divide people and ideas...

...and I couldn't disagree more.

( my $statement = $acme_statement ) =~ s/divide/enrich/;

I speak three languages, which is about average in my peer group, nothing special.  It is perhaps worth noting that the last few wars in Europe were between people who had no difficulty communicating with each other.

I don't think I know any Perl programmer who only programs in one language.  I know a Python guy who claims to only do Python but I don't believe him (I think he does Javascript too).

What I find particularly fun is when multilingual people write multilingual code – variables in English, comments in German, that sort of thing.

My 0.02 EUR.

cheers

-- frosty

PS, "not.com" - brilliant. :-)

On Oct 15, 2011, at 3:00 PM, yary wrote:

>> ... Acmeism (http://acmeism.org) ...
> 
>  There's a problem with the home page that distracts from is noble premise:
> 
> "Most people learn one natural (spoken) language. Most computer
> programmers learn one programming language."
> 
> Most people on earth now and historically are bilingual, modern USA is
> a monolinguistic anomaly. And do you know any programmers who only
> learned one programming language? Is it even possible to get a job as
> a programmer if you only know one programming language? grrr.
> 
> And even the US has standard English vs. colloquial dialects, akin to
> speaking perl 5.14 at home and perl 5.8 at work, not different
> languages but still slightly different modes to switch among.
> 
> There are many definitions of language and of being bilingual, so it's
> a quibble that can't be argued precisely. My quick search of the web
> turns up estimates saying 50%-75% of the world's population being
> multilingual. But why detract from an otherwise decent introduction?
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