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I'm sorry but this "feature" is yet another design a hacker living in a bubble came up with. Most people think and program in English, or languages very close t

I'm sorry but this "feature" is yet another design a hacker living in a bubble came up with. Most people think and program in English, or languages very close to English. In English I can read let x be 4ys and some change. I don't know how to read the arrow. 4ys and some change implies x? If this is a feature designed purely for speakers of SOV or OSV order languages like Japanese, that's fine, but the dominant language in technical discourse isn't one of those.

mudlus 6y ago
Comprehension follows perception
dragonwriter 6y ago
> I don't know how to read the arrow. As a description (which is an easier translation of this idiom into English than an imperative) “is assigned to”. Imperatively, English tends to prefer verb-object with implicit subject, so we ought to be using a Lisp family language (setq “foo” 42) maps better to English imperative structure than most popular languages that do imperative assignment.
- wyuenho 6y ago
  Complete English sentences in present tense are infix, with the subject and object clearly stated. Implicit subjects only follow after the first sentence in a paragraph or a phrase. Case in point is the words you've read so far. "are", "follow" and "is" are verbs. This is why most programming languages are in infix notation. Lisp syntax stayed is a historical accident. [1] Arabic is a prefix languages, and people don't program in Arabic. "is assigned to" is passive voice. I think we've all learned in writing classes we should avoid it as much as possible because stating the active voice is clearer. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html
  - dragonwriter 6y ago
    > Complete English sentences in present tense are infix. . Implicit subjects only follow after the first sentence in a paragraph or a phrase. This is true of the indicative mood, but not the imperative. Giving commands in the indicative mood is not typical.
    - wyuenho 6y ago
      Yes that's true. That's why most languages have infix operators and prefix function calls.
  - dllthomas 6y ago
    > I think we've all learned in writing classes we should avoid it as much as possible because stating the active voice is clearer. Writing classes can be misguided. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/grammar/passives.html http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/grammar/passives.html
    - wyuenho 6y ago
      No, in that example, the TA is very misguided and clearly didn't understand what passive voice is. Passive voice only applies to verbs, and it's often used to invert the object and the subject, occasionally used to emphasis one over another[1]. Unfortunately in English, there are a lot of adjectives that look like verbs in passive voice, examples like "interested" and "motivated" are given in the link you provided. The Edinburgh professor is not wrong either, he just thought every university teaches in America teaches passive voice the wrong way. Not in my case. [1]: https://www.ef.com/ca/english-resources/english-grammar/passive-voice/ https://www.ef.com/ca/english-resources/english-grammar/pass...
      - dllthomas 6y ago
        The student paper is one of many examples of people inveighing against the passive while 1) providing incorrect examples, and usually 2) using it. It's amusing, but it's not the whole point: "The passive is of course perfectly respectable, and there is no reason to try to avoid it. (To say that it shouldn't be over-used, or it shouldn't be used where it is inappropriate, doesn't distinguish it from any other construction or expression.)" See the tremendous list of Language Log links at the bottom which deal with the issue from a host of angles. I recommend reading some of them - Geoff Pullum, in particular, is usually delightful. "You should use active voice whenever possible" is bad advice - both active and passive are (nearly?) always possible but often one is clearer - and that can very much be the passive. "You should use active except when passive is better" is arguably correct but fails to actually provide guidance about when the passive actually is better - which isn't rare. That the passive is often overused may be useful to note, if that's actually the case.
        6y ago

mudlus 6y ago

Comprehension follows perception

dragonwriter 6y ago

> I don't know how to read the arrow. As a description (which is an easier translation of this idiom into English than an imperative) “is assigned to”. Imperatively, English tends to prefer verb-object with implicit subject, so we ought to be using a Lisp family language (setq “foo” 42) maps better to English imperative structure than most popular languages that do imperative assignment.

wyuenho 6y ago
Complete English sentences in present tense are infix, with the subject and object clearly stated. Implicit subjects only follow after the first sentence in a paragraph or a phrase. Case in point is the words you've read so far. "are", "follow" and "is" are verbs. This is why most programming languages are in infix notation. Lisp syntax stayed is a historical accident. [1] Arabic is a prefix languages, and people don't program in Arabic. "is assigned to" is passive voice. I think we've all learned in writing classes we should avoid it as much as possible because stating the active voice is clearer. [1]: http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html http://www.paulgraham.com/icad.html
- dragonwriter 6y ago
  > Complete English sentences in present tense are infix. . Implicit subjects only follow after the first sentence in a paragraph or a phrase. This is true of the indicative mood, but not the imperative. Giving commands in the indicative mood is not typical.
  - wyuenho 6y ago
    Yes that's true. That's why most languages have infix operators and prefix function calls.
- dllthomas 6y ago
  > I think we've all learned in writing classes we should avoid it as much as possible because stating the active voice is clearer. Writing classes can be misguided. http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/grammar/passives.html http://www.lel.ed.ac.uk/grammar/passives.html
  - wyuenho 6y ago
    No, in that example, the TA is very misguided and clearly didn't understand what passive voice is. Passive voice only applies to verbs, and it's often used to invert the object and the subject, occasionally used to emphasis one over another[1]. Unfortunately in English, there are a lot of adjectives that look like verbs in passive voice, examples like "interested" and "motivated" are given in the link you provided. The Edinburgh professor is not wrong either, he just thought every university teaches in America teaches passive voice the wrong way. Not in my case. [1]: https://www.ef.com/ca/english-resources/english-grammar/passive-voice/ https://www.ef.com/ca/english-resources/english-grammar/pass...
    - dllthomas 6y ago
      The student paper is one of many examples of people inveighing against the passive while 1) providing incorrect examples, and usually 2) using it. It's amusing, but it's not the whole point: "The passive is of course perfectly respectable, and there is no reason to try to avoid it. (To say that it shouldn't be over-used, or it shouldn't be used where it is inappropriate, doesn't distinguish it from any other construction or expression.)" See the tremendous list of Language Log links at the bottom which deal with the issue from a host of angles. I recommend reading some of them - Geoff Pullum, in particular, is usually delightful. "You should use active voice whenever possible" is bad advice - both active and passive are (nearly?) always possible but often one is clearer - and that can very much be the passive. "You should use active except when passive is better" is arguably correct but fails to actually provide guidance about when the passive actually is better - which isn't rare. That the passive is often overused may be useful to note, if that's actually the case.
      - 6y ago