Re: Beginning C++ in FreeBSD

On Mon, 26 Apr 2004 14:20:26 -0400
Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> wrote:

> Chris Pressey said on Apr 26, 2004 at 10:28:44:
> > Rahul Siddharthan <rsidd@online.fr> wrote:
> > > Chris Pressey wrote:
> > > > > A single Greek word for which there isn't an equivalent word
> > > > > in English-- and I mean exact equivalent, including all the
> > > > > possible meanings and nuances that this word can express in
> > > > > the Greek language-- should be enough as an example, right?
> > > > 
> > > > Unfortunately, no, it's not enough.
> > > > 
> > > > A single Greek word for which there isn't an equivalent English
> > > > word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, essay, book, or library would
> > > > be enough though.
> > > 
> > > Which has very little relevance to programming languages.
> > 
> > I disagree; I think the parallel to optimization in different
> > languages is quite strong. 
> 
> The question was whether you can do something in one language that you
> can't in another.  If one interprets that your way (wanting an example
> of a word in Greek that can't be expressed by an entire library in
> English), the answer is clearly no.  If one talks about conciseness
> and optimisation, obviously that's a different question.

But optimization *was* the original topic which spawned the question. 
My "challenge" was, in part, trying to illustrate that things do not get
lost in translation because languages are *non-equivalent* (Danny's /
Sapir & Whorf's original claim) but because they *optimize differently*.

This certainly seems (to me) to apply to human and programming languages
alike.

-Chris
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