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> Source code conveys everything possible about your program in any language. I disagree with this statement. Behaviour of the program will be determined by ma

> Source code conveys everything possible about your program in any language. I disagree with this statement. Behaviour of the program will be determined by machine instructions that the compiler generates for a given source plus the machine environment where these instructions will be run. And it is not guaranteed that the generated instructions will be same for a given source across different architectures and environments that the compiler is run (plus I guess there is generally some degree of non-determinism in the compilers as well, because of the different optimizations it can make under different conditions, which are not "explicit" from the source itself). As far I understood, in the notion of explicitness that is defined in the article, it is defined that the language where source almost completely specifies the behaviour of program, irrespective of the compiler environments where it is compiled on, is an explicit language. I think in the sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034541 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16034541 bad_user articulates more clearly the point I was trying to make.

judofyr 9y ago
The behaviour is usually determined by language specification, and there are many machine instructions that can cause the correct behaviour. There are some cases where languages have machine-dependent behaviour, but most parts of most languages define the semantics independent of the machine it's running on. > As far I understood, in the notion of explicitness that is defined in the article, it is defined that the language where source almost completely specifies the behaviour of program, irrespective of the compiler environments where it is compiled on, is an explicit language. I've never seen anyone use this definition for "explicit". Most people use "explicit" to describe syntactical differences (e.g. "explicit vs implicit self/this"). "Implicits" in Scala is where the compiler inserts a method/function-call that didn't exist syntactically. The behaviour is still well-defined and not dependent on the machine instructions. What you're describing sounds to me more about the language defining its own execution model that's abstracted above actual computers.

judofyr 9y ago

The behaviour is usually determined by language specification, and there are many machine instructions that can cause the correct behaviour. There are some cases where languages have machine-dependent behaviour, but most parts of most languages define the semantics independent of the machine it's running on. > As far I understood, in the notion of explicitness that is defined in the article, it is defined that the language where source almost completely specifies the behaviour of program, irrespective of the compiler environments where it is compiled on, is an explicit language. I've never seen anyone use this definition for "explicit". Most people use "explicit" to describe syntactical differences (e.g. "explicit vs implicit self/this"). "Implicits" in Scala is where the compiler inserts a method/function-call that didn't exist syntactically. The behaviour is still well-defined and not dependent on the machine instructions. What you're describing sounds to me more about the language defining its own execution model that's abstracted above actual computers.