[REBOL] Re: Linguistic influences
From: nitsch-lists:netcologne at: 11-May-2002 21:57
Hi Joel & all,
Am Samstag, 11. Mai 2002 16:29 schrieben Sie:
> Hi, all,
>
> The discussion stimulated by Tim's question on internal dots
> reminded me of a question (about REBOL and other things as
> well) that I've pondered over the years. Since this list has
> a very eclectic, erudite, international population, perhaps
> someone can shed some light for me.
>
> Please consider the following paragraphs:
>
> Paragraph 1
> -----------
>
> From my decades-ago one year of college German, it seemed
> that one deeply nested with many subordinate qualifiers,
> subtle variations in meaning to express, (at least in
> literary style) sentences can construct. This style a
> certain degree of mental discipline and attention span
> (and perhaps a deep "mental stack") to understand requires.
>
> Paragraph 2
> -----------
>
> American English is different. We move quickly through an
> MTV, evening-news-sound-bite world. Brevity is the soul
> of wit. Don't make me think. Just spit it out.
> Hemingway was brilliant.
>
> I'd be happy to have some of our German-speaking friends (and
> perhaps others not hampered by English as a native language)
> to comment on whether Paragraph 1 is a plausible word-order
> construction for German, or whether it is just a bad parody
> concocted of too many elapsed years and too little understanding.
>
> What does this have to do with REBOL??? Please consider the
> following function definitions:
>
> insflatten: func [b [block!] /local front] [
> either empty? b [
> copy []
> ][
> head insert insflatten next b either block? front: first b [
> insflatten front
> ][
> front
> ]
> ]
> ]
>
> flattenins: func [b [block!] /local result front] [
> either empty? b [
> result: copy []
> ][
> front: first b
> result: insflatten next b
> either block? front [
> insert result insflatten front
> ][
> insert result front
> ]
> ]
> result
> ]
>
ups. that does - (thinking) - urgs. uff. ?? hmm.
somehow the first version seems (reformatting)
insflatten: func [rest [block!] ] [
either empty? rest [
copy []
][
head
insert
insflatten next rest
either block? first rest [
insflatten first rest
][
first rest
]
]
]
aha! hmm2: all this inserting at front, and recursion? (coding)
insflatten: func [rest /into out] [
out: any [out copy []]
foreach item rest [
either any-block? item [
insflatten/into item out
] [
insert tail out item
]
]
out
]
subordinate qualifiers by recursion in loops, but subtle variations in meaning
of recursion (full new block/rest of block) are lacking.
better material use: seems faster.
but lacks the poesy of the recursive version.
obviously you coded for example, not performance ;)
but IMHO this kind of nesting is more german, more logically.
lots of commas works well if you want to impress someone:
if he gets a stack-overflow, he would not admit it,
so keep adding and ask suddenly "right or wrong?" ;)
for poesy i think german is not a stack, its interconnected.
a good literary german sentence refreshs a whole world.
english is for tourists: "look here! and there! and this!" ;)
its a bit like rebols "any[lots of conditons in lots of lines]"
instead of englishs "lots of short ifs" somehow.
loosely related, a while ago i thought
we can say easy "valve of tube of wheel of bike"
but "bikes wheels tubes valve"?
how about an operator 'of ? ;)
> Both of these functions return a "flattened" block containing all
> of the data from an arbitrarily-nested argument block, without
>
> destroying the structure of the argument itself, as in:
> >> foo: [[[0 1] 2 [[3] 4] 5] [[6]]]
>
> == [[[0 1] 2 [[3] 4] 5] [[6]]]
>
> >> insflatten foo
>
> == [0 1 2 3 4 5 6]
>
> >> flattenins foo
>
> == [0 1 2 3 4 5 6]
>
> >> foo
>
> == [[[0 1] 2 [[3] 4] 5] [[6]]]
>
> It seems to me that INSFLATTEN is stylistically analogous to
> Paragraph 1 as FLATTENINS is to Paragraph 2. The first (in
> each case) uses a nested thought structure, while the second
> is more choppy and uses simpler structures.
>
> Here, then is my pondering...
>
> What is the extent to which a person's native (or habitual)
> language influences that person's mental habits? Do those
> influences then emerge in other kinds of behavior, such as
> programming style?
>
> If my recollection of German literary style is not too flawed,
> would a literarily-oriented German speaker be more comfortable
> (or more quickly comfortable) with a nested, structured style
> illustrated by INSFLATTEN than an equally-trained American?
>
> Would a "child of the boob tube" be more likely to prefer (or
> understand...) the style of FLATTENINS than someone more
> accustomed to thought -ful/-provoking literature?
>
> -jn-
-volker
