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> So, to summarize: I never actually heard a compelling general theory of good syntax. I started to think along these lines when I got serious about learning a

by kd5bjo 6y ago

> So, to summarize: I never actually heard a compelling general theory of good syntax. I started to think along these lines when I got serious about learning a foreign language. Humans appear to have some innate language ability that’s reflected, among other things, in commonalities between disparate languages. As far as I can tell, there’s been no serious effort to design a computer language to take advantage of this. My pet theory about why the object.method(args) call syntax won is that it really is the most natural to read, as evidenced by the fact that most human languages follow subject-verb-object word order.

ukj 6y ago
The commonality you are referring to sounds like Chomsky's concept of Universal Grammar [1]. The object.method(args) "won" because it is a low barrier to entry from English to Programming indeed, but as you become more and more experienced and you shake off the imperative way of thinking in favour of declarative thinking functional languages becomes more expressive than imperative languages. They become better at managing complexity because they allow you to build higher and higher towers of abstraction. And then homoiconicity [2] shines because of its 'universally grammatic' property. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconicity
- kd5bjo 6y ago
  I was thinking on a more basic level than UG; just the presence of linguistic universals [1]. I agree that functional languages are in a certain way more expressive than imperative ones, but that seems mostly orthogonal to the syntax of the language. I’m thinking about basic stuff like improper nouns, denoting a clause’s role by inflection or adposition instead of word order, and having a clearly defined spoken representation- none of this is specific to which abstract structures the language is describing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_universal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_universal
- yyyk 6y ago
  >The object.method(args) "won" because it is a low barrier to entry from English to Programming indeed BASIC and C didn't have a concept of objects* , which didn't seem to hinder adoption at all. object.method() became popular when OOP languages became popular, and that was because IDEs offered better autocompletion with that syntax. * We could emulate objects with C in some gnarly ways. Almost no one did at the time, excluding C-with-classes/C++.
skocznymroczny 6y ago
It's not that simple, D has UFCS (Uniform Function Call Syntax), which makes object.method(args) and method(object, args) equivalent calls. Also there's a non-language related advantage of dot notation. Type the name of the object, press dot and IDE will show you what things you can do with that object. You don't have that with other notations.
- jasonpbecker 6y ago
  That assumes a very OO mindset. method(object, args)/function(data, parameters) works better in other languages, and IDEs can handle this quite well without dot syntax. Which goes to your point-- form follows function, in syntax as with many other things.
- gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
  Why is dot special? Fortran uses % (if I remember properly) IDE's can complete after a % as well as after a dot.
  - int_19h 6y ago
    Dot is not special. Putting the receiver objects first is special, because it allows the IDE to only show verbs (methods) that pertain to that object. If you put the verb first, code completion lacks context, so it would necessarily have to show you all verbs that can apply to any object that could conceivably be acted on in that scope.
g5becks 6y ago
Though I program in languages that most follow the obj.method(args) pattern, I really prefer the args |> function |> function pattern and I wish it was the norm in every programming language.
- dahfizz 6y ago
  In what language is that used? It reminds me of pipes in bash. I can see it being useful in circumstances where you have lots of function calls and fewer arguments (just like pipes), but I think it would look really ugly and hard to parse with a long arg list.
  - paublyrne 6y ago
    Elixir for one. Yes it works best when you have one argument to pass, as the first argument is passed implicitly. https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Kernel.html#%7C%3E/2 https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Kernel.html#%7C%3E/2
  - jdmichal 6y ago
    It's a common functional thing. I know F# has both `|>` and `<|` to go both directions. It also has `||>` and `|||>` variants which take two- or three-value tuples and spread them to arguments. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-reference/functions/#function-composition-and-pipelining https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-refe...
  - phaedryx 6y ago
    See also Clojure's threading macros: https://clojure.org/guides/threading_macros https://clojure.org/guides/threading_macros
  - Certhas 6y ago
    Julia supports it, too: https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/base/#Base.:|%3E https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/base/#Base.:|%3E
- int_19h 6y ago
  These are two different use cases. In the first case, which method the call actually dispatches to depends on obj, so it kinda makes sense for it to be syntactically distinct from other args. The pipeline syntax is normally used with free-standing functions that are statically dispatched. Now, yes, there are languages with multimethods, where the distinction is less obvious. For those that always dispatch on all arguments, a uniform syntax makes more sense. CLOS is a good example.
feikname 6y ago
> My pet theory about why the object.method(args) call syntax won is that it really is the most natural to read, as evidenced by the fact that most human languages follow subject-verb-object word order. Most western languages maybe, but according to wikipedia[1] the most common is actually SOV rather than SVO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Distribution_of_word_order_types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Distribution_of_wor...
- indecisive_user 6y ago
  Most common by number of languages maybe, but if we look at most common by number of people who speak the language, the top 3 most popular languages in the world(Mandarin, Spanish, English) are all SVO.
lifthrasiir 6y ago
> [...] as evidenced by the fact that most human languages follow subject-verb-object word order. Nope. [1] [1] https://wals.info/chapter/81 https://wals.info/chapter/81 (Note that while this is the language count only, the same comment applies to the population using such word order as a native tongue: SOV and SVO are both common.)

by kd5bjo 6y ago

ukj 6y ago

The commonality you are referring to sounds like Chomsky's concept of Universal Grammar [1]. The object.method(args) "won" because it is a low barrier to entry from English to Programming indeed, but as you become more and more experienced and you shake off the imperative way of thinking in favour of declarative thinking functional languages becomes more expressive than imperative languages. They become better at managing complexity because they allow you to build higher and higher towers of abstraction. And then homoiconicity [2] shines because of its 'universally grammatic' property. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_grammar 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homoiconicity

kd5bjo 6y ago
I was thinking on a more basic level than UG; just the presence of linguistic universals [1]. I agree that functional languages are in a certain way more expressive than imperative ones, but that seems mostly orthogonal to the syntax of the language. I’m thinking about basic stuff like improper nouns, denoting a clause’s role by inflection or adposition instead of word order, and having a clearly defined spoken representation- none of this is specific to which abstract structures the language is describing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_universal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linguistic_universal
yyyk 6y ago
>The object.method(args) "won" because it is a low barrier to entry from English to Programming indeed BASIC and C didn't have a concept of objects* , which didn't seem to hinder adoption at all. object.method() became popular when OOP languages became popular, and that was because IDEs offered better autocompletion with that syntax. * We could emulate objects with C in some gnarly ways. Almost no one did at the time, excluding C-with-classes/C++.

skocznymroczny 6y ago

It's not that simple, D has UFCS (Uniform Function Call Syntax), which makes object.method(args) and method(object, args) equivalent calls. Also there's a non-language related advantage of dot notation. Type the name of the object, press dot and IDE will show you what things you can do with that object. You don't have that with other notations.

jasonpbecker 6y ago
That assumes a very OO mindset. method(object, args)/function(data, parameters) works better in other languages, and IDEs can handle this quite well without dot syntax. Which goes to your point-- form follows function, in syntax as with many other things.
gvjddbnvdrbv 6y ago
Why is dot special? Fortran uses % (if I remember properly) IDE's can complete after a % as well as after a dot.
- int_19h 6y ago
  Dot is not special. Putting the receiver objects first is special, because it allows the IDE to only show verbs (methods) that pertain to that object. If you put the verb first, code completion lacks context, so it would necessarily have to show you all verbs that can apply to any object that could conceivably be acted on in that scope.

g5becks 6y ago

Though I program in languages that most follow the obj.method(args) pattern, I really prefer the args |> function |> function pattern and I wish it was the norm in every programming language.

dahfizz 6y ago
In what language is that used? It reminds me of pipes in bash. I can see it being useful in circumstances where you have lots of function calls and fewer arguments (just like pipes), but I think it would look really ugly and hard to parse with a long arg list.
- paublyrne 6y ago
  Elixir for one. Yes it works best when you have one argument to pass, as the first argument is passed implicitly. https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Kernel.html#%7C%3E/2 https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/Kernel.html#%7C%3E/2
- jdmichal 6y ago
  It's a common functional thing. I know F# has both `|>` and `<|` to go both directions. It also has `||>` and `|||>` variants which take two- or three-value tuples and spread them to arguments. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-reference/functions/#function-composition-and-pipelining https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/fsharp/language-refe...
- phaedryx 6y ago
  See also Clojure's threading macros: https://clojure.org/guides/threading_macros https://clojure.org/guides/threading_macros
- Certhas 6y ago
  Julia supports it, too: https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/base/#Base.:|%3E https://docs.julialang.org/en/v1/base/base/#Base.:|%3E
int_19h 6y ago
These are two different use cases. In the first case, which method the call actually dispatches to depends on obj, so it kinda makes sense for it to be syntactically distinct from other args. The pipeline syntax is normally used with free-standing functions that are statically dispatched. Now, yes, there are languages with multimethods, where the distinction is less obvious. For those that always dispatch on all arguments, a uniform syntax makes more sense. CLOS is a good example.

feikname 6y ago

> My pet theory about why the object.method(args) call syntax won is that it really is the most natural to read, as evidenced by the fact that most human languages follow subject-verb-object word order. Most western languages maybe, but according to wikipedia[1] the most common is actually SOV rather than SVO. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Distribution_of_word_order_types https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_order#Distribution_of_wor...

indecisive_user 6y ago
Most common by number of languages maybe, but if we look at most common by number of people who speak the language, the top 3 most popular languages in the world(Mandarin, Spanish, English) are all SVO.

lifthrasiir 6y ago

> [...] as evidenced by the fact that most human languages follow subject-verb-object word order. Nope. [1] [1] https://wals.info/chapter/81 https://wals.info/chapter/81 (Note that while this is the language count only, the same comment applies to the population using such word order as a native tongue: SOV and SVO are both common.)