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CSG

                                              April 08, 2006

I'm groping for a term
here, something like                 The CSG is mathematically
                                     oriented, in the traditions
  "computer science geeks".          of the academic discipline
                                     of "computer science".
("Computer Scientist"
isn't good enough: that              Many programmers come
would imply someone with             out of this discipline,
a PhD in the field.)                 but many others --
                                     like myself -- don't.

                                 The perl culture is
                                 happy to take ideas    THE_PERL_AFFAIR
                                 from the "computer
                                 science" culture when
                                 they seem useful,
               Larry Wall's      but is not itself a
               technical         part of that culture.
               background is
               in unix systems      There's no
               programming,         end of
               and he often         criticism of    The computer science
               cites the            perl that       geeks like to pretend
               influence of         arises out of   that their objections to
               linguistics          the CSG         perl are rooted in the
               on his design        culture         hard-edged knowledge
               of perl.                             that lies at the heart
                                                    of their discipline.
               An artificial
               language using                       My contention is that this
               some concepts                        isn't so, and can't be so,
               from natural                         and it's best to think of
               languages.                           it as a cultural mis-match.
 [ref]

                                                                  COMPUTER_SCIENCE_PROOF

        Steve Yegge dismisses
        this as a "non-argument",
        and reveals much about                                   (01/2020)
        his own biases in the                                    
        process.                           Maybe I was thinking of these
                                           remarks:
           He can't perceive it as
           an argument, because            "Larry uses 'just like English' as
           it's an argument at a           one of his typical silly appeals to
           more fundamental level          nonreason."
           than he's used to: it
           challenges things he                                   [ref]
           believes can't be                             
           challenged, but isn't              Actually, Larry doesn't say 
           really sure why.                   anything about perl being like 
                                              English, he talks about using
                                              features from natural languages
                                              in general.
                                                         
                                                         

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